In Time We Trust
by Trogdor19
Summary: Anybody sick to death of Qetsiyah, doppelganger hijinks, and stingy Delena time? Try this full-length Season 5 rewrite, where I give the characters a little more time to grow and reflect, a lot more time to cuddle and (ah-hem) other things, with plenty of room left over for sarcastic banter and gratuitous, cheerful violence, TVD style. Romance, Bromance, Suspense, Humor
1. Prologue: An Iron Diary

_Author's Note: A Delena fic that starts with Stefan? What? I know, I know, but the muse insisted and when your muse is Irish and violent, you don't argue. But have a little faith, dear readers. I won't let you down. Also, I wrote this before 5x02 showed that Stefan's safe had no lining._

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**Prologue: An Iron Diary**

**STEFAN**

It should be funny.

Damon would laugh, because he always dredges up a laugh for good irony, even when it comes out poisoned with bitterness. He would be going crazy in here, trying to break the screws apart with his fingernails, testing his strength over and over against the steel because he has never known when it was past time to give up. Has never known how to be still.

That's my department. Brooding in dark rooms, endlessly writing but otherwise barely moving at all, denying myself the things I want most. Especially blood. Always blood. This coffin should be my heaven, my brother would say, the sardonic twist to his mouth so implied that I can see it even in the unrelieved black of the water that torments me.

It should be just this side of hilarious that I am not content. This grave has given me an eternity of free rein to do exactly what I would have been doing anyway: secluding myself in a penance with no absolution. But now I can finally accept that it, that _this_, is nothing that I want to be.

And yet I gave in. I lay quiet and I write, just as everyone would have expected. I breathe, though the heavy water chokes me every time I forget. It's a tiny world built of ironies and contradictions that I inhabit now.

I'm dead, but buried alive.

I'm slowly desiccating, but surrounded on all sides by water.

I'm blind but yet I write, tracing words on the wrong side of the safe door, their shapes a comfort even as the repetition wears the skin from my fingertips and they heal, over and over again. I can't stop but I begin to learn gentleness with myself because I know the time is coming when my body will crave blood too much to be able to hoard its own. I barely tickle the lining of the safe when I write now. It is a soft, blood-red velour, the color taunting me even though in the place where I exist now, everything is invisible.

I don't sleep, because I refuse to give up another ounce of my senses past what has already been stolen from me.

I screamed at first, gagging heedlessly as I kicked and pounded and fought. I nearly broke my cell phone in half, texting Damon over and over with trembling fingers while the No Service icon taunted me with the accusation of its steadily glowing eye, until the water killed it too. Sick to the core of myself over the final loss of Elena, maybe I would have fallen slack earlier if I didn't know that Silas was out there, stalking my loved ones freely, using my own face as his key to all their houses.

The way I once tormented them, without a shred of the guilt that Damon thinks I can't live without.

I wonder which of us is worse behind our identical eyes, which of us will prove to be the most deeply, selfishly evil. The most destructive. God knows I've shown my worst to this town, to my friends, more than once.

It's not their names I write on the ceiling of my universe now, though. It is his name (mine? ) that I write, as if the curve of the indiscernible letters will reveal his nature. If he is truly my dark side, or if I was created to be his.

I didn't understand, from his smug soliloquy, what sort of creature he truly was and he didn't exactly wait around for me to satisfy my curiosity. He didn't kill me, though, and I doubt it was only for a more symmetrical kind of revenge. (Against me? Against fate?) If he thinks my life has been a gift that he was denied, he didn't do much research.

No one in Mystic Falls ever pulls the punches on their revenge plots unless they have to. No, Silas didn't kill me because something about that would harm him too, or because he needs me for something else. But even as I trace the words, I know no one will ever read them, and there's not a thing I can do about him from here.

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_Author's Note: Oh hell, it's great to be back! I so missed all of you! Next chapter up is a delightfully snarky Damon POV, so don't underuse your follow button, people. I think I'll try to put it up tomorrow, since today's chapter was just a teensy appetizer. _

_Thanks to Goldnox, for a title of superlative, psychic brilliance and a summary to match, for 376 gorgeous Delena shots for possible covers, for beta'ing like nobody else in this wide, beautiful world, for texted pillow fights and socks and swastika-ed e-cards and oh I just give up. _

_If you feel like reveling in her complete mastery of the English language with screaming-hot Delena as her medium, check out her stuff on Amazon Kindle Worlds: C.L. Marlene's "Sounds of Tomorrow" and "Resonance of Reality." They're criminally underpriced. _

_Thanks to Latbfan for surprisingly useful rants about TVD's plot holes and OOC violations. Okay, everybody stop for a minute and focus your collective minds on sending her TVD inspiration for a Season 5 fic…ZAP! __*dusts hands * My work here is done._

_If anybody would like to check out my full length rewrite of Season 4 with epic Delena hotness, giant fight scenes, original characters and ghost Ric tossed in for good measure, head on over to Amazon and search for Michelle Hazen's The Desperate Love Trilogy. And if you're done with angst for the moment, hop on over to "Happily Ever After: Salvatore Style" also available from Michelle Hazen and Amazon Kindle Worlds. _

_Until next chapter, goodnight, good luck, and sweet Damon-y dreams to all of you!_


	2. The Sweet Taste of Freedom

_Author's Note: This fic starts after the end of 5x02 "True Lies."_

**Chapter 1: The Sweet Taste of Freedom**

**DAMON**

Of the top ten places where you shouldn't bring your girlfriend, the impromptu viewing of a corpse definitely makes the cut.

Nice fucking job, Salvatore.

Then again, since this is definitely representative of our dating history, I guess it's no wonder our first big lovers spat nearly ended up being a murder suicide dorm-torching to rival the Kool-Aid drinking barbecue at the Young farm.

I wince and swing the safe door closed. No need to treat Elena to the soon-to-be-revisited-via-nightmare sight of Deputy Lunchable's corpse. Although, since Bloodless Bob is in plainclothes, Liz may not be needing to post a new job opening on Monster dot com first thing Monday morning.

Still, if you stop on the way to the office to go hiking in a vampire-occupied forest wearing JC Penney's best in business casual, maybe you deserve to be breakfast.

I glance over to check on Elena and she's all shock and dark eyes asking me for all kinds of things I can't give her: healthy, sane brothers; Silas, preferably the real kind of dead; or I know, maybe a normal fucking life. I wonder if she's remembering when we locked her in this same safe, a futile attempt to keep her from making more corpses like the one that's currently occupying it.

I turn to the sheriff. "Liz, thanks for doing this."

She presses her lips together and I know the concern in her eyes is as much for me as it is for Stefan. I look away because it means absolutely dick. Liz is always sorry, but she's also not shy when it comes to shooting in defense of her fucked up little town.

"Find him, Damon. If he's running around out there, hungry…" Liz shakes her head. She glances at Elena and my eyes narrow. I know exactly what she doesn't want to say in front of a girl she's known since she had pigtails and Lisa Frank folders.

"Oh no, I get it, Sheriff," I snipe. "You're on animal control duty and Mystic Falls can't afford a no-kill shelter."

Elena sucks in a breath. "Wait, but you know Stefan, you know he'll be okay. We just have to find him and get him clean. He can't control himself right now, especially not when he's starving…"

I tune out her pleading and Liz's pained responses, glancing around the forest. I don't hear so much as a deputy moving around out there, but the blood on that corpse was less than a day old. Stefan won't have gotten farther than the closest house.

I glance around, getting my bearings, and stride off into the forest. The conversation behind me stutters and grinds to a halt and then Elena is calling apologies back to Sheriff Forbes and jogging after me.

"Did you hear something?"

"Nope, but since Silas was kind enough to dump Stefan near such a hot spot of sentimentalism, I know exactly where he'll go," I tell her tersely.

"The quarry," she whispers, her hand rising to her throat. "Oh my God."

I jerk my chin up in agreement, though I doubt God was much involved in the shit that's gone down at this quarry.

When the water comes into view, I'm looking for one thing: the remnants of a rough shack where Stefan and I once awoke to Katherine's judgy little maidservant, a pair of custom-made daylight rings, and an eternity of unwelcome drama.

Once I spot the old, stacked-rock foundation, I take a sharp left and head toward where the Salvatore estate used to be. First house I hit from here will have my brother in it, or at least enough grisly finger-paintings to make the walls look like Hannibal Lector's pre-school classroom.

"You should go home," I tell Elena, tossing her the car keys. "Baby bro and I will walk back. It'll give me time to treat him to the Bambi buffet and remind him not to eat his dessert first."

She catches the keys and stuffs them in her pocket with a glare, not even bothering to argue as she hurries to keep up. I shorten my stride to make it easier, because when you're reading a Russian novel you don't peek ahead to see if there's a happy ending and when you're tracking my bat-shit crazy brother, you don't risk a speeding ticket.

If there's a human hors d'oeuvre left in Mystic Falls, he won't have gone farther than that.

"Damon…" She doesn't finish, so I assume that it wasn't a let's-have-makeup-sex Damon. It sounded more like a what-the-hell-are-we-going-to-do Damon. Something about the way the tone drops rather than rises on the "n."

The answer is dig a lot of shallow graves, bust out the Clorox wipes and then WD-40 the hinges on the basement cell. But I don't think she wants to hear that, so I let her listen to the chirp and rustle of the forest creatures while I march us toward the official end of the "happy" part of Elena's first freshman year.

The first building we come to is a sprawling, historic country manor that has been chopped up into apartments, according to the ugly black mailboxes lined up next to the entrance.

_Six _apartments.

Fuck.

I stop and take a deep breath while Elena reaches for the doorknob, shoving my fists into my pockets to keep myself from yanking that delicate daylight ring away from everything that's on the other side. The crusty smell of congealing blood tells me I nailed his first stop, but it's my ears that tell me where I'll find my brother.

Because no one but Stefan would be in the backyard of a slaughterhouse whistling Dixie, each note blown just a touch too hard.

"Don't," I tell Elena quietly. "He's not in there."

She turns back, her lips pressing together unhappily, and she reaches for me.

I let her hand settle onto my bare upper arm because for every nasty thing I am, I'm a sucker for her first and foremost and this afternoon is not looking promising. I'll take what I can get.

"Last summer wasn't the first time you've tracked Stefan through one of his binges, was it?"

"I know," I tell her. "I need a hobby. Don't rub it in."

Her other hand rises to my cheek and my skin drinks her in, even though I refuse to let myself sink into her touch. Not right now. She needs this version of me today, whether she knows it or not.

"I wish he didn't make you see these things," she whispers.

I catch her wrist and move it away from my face. "Stefan didn't exactly give me my first peek at an R-rated life, Elena. I've made plenty of messes of my own." I turn back toward the porch steps. "Stay here if you don't want to see him without his hero hair on."

Stubbornly brave little thing she is, she follows me anyway and so I have to listen to her footsteps falter when she hears his whistling. And because I do stupid things, I keep listening until I hear the gasp telling me she's misinterpreted the sound. I don't correct her. Because after all these years, I still don't know which option is worse: Ripper Stefan with his switch off, or Ripper Stefan, humanity and ineffective guilt complex firmly in place.

The body count is the same either way.

When we round the corner he's laying on his back, hands clasped easily behind his head, watching the sky.

I stop by the dark-smeared sole of his boot and let my eyes travel up the wreck of his body. The blood is different colors depending on its relative age: the crimson of sin all the way down to graveyard soil brown. Hours of binging are stratigraphically recorded on his clothes and his face is no better, a thick smear tangling clots into his right eyebrow, which rises when he smiles at me in greeting.

"Hey," he says, his eyes intense as they jump between us, though his tone is light. He rolls up onto an elbow to face us and I don't miss the casual swipe of his forearm across his mouth that he tries to hide in the movement.

"You've got a little something," I tell him, tapping a finger to the corner of my mouth. "Just right…" My friendly voice vanishes. "All over your fucking face."

He cocks his head in the careless way he only ever has when he's well-fed. "Oh, do I? I'm sorry, does it offend you? You know, eating the way you do all the time?"

"Stefan, I drink blood bags," Elena says, her horror seeping out through her words. "Not…not–"

"Not people?" His smile is sharp, but when he turns to her the lines of his face droop ever so slightly, weariness creeping in.

I shift my weight, watching him suspiciously. I've seen him in this mood before, and he's strong right now. Fast. Unpredictable. With Andie, it took less than a second. She was there, and then she just…wasn't.

He rolls onto his back, propping his hands behind his head again. He takes a deep breath and hiccups. "My first meal this summer. Or my last meal, who knows?" He laughs, tilting his chin down to look at me. "Do you know what it's like, Damon? To be _dry_?"

My fingers twitch with the jolt that surges through me at his words. I knew the inside of that safe didn't smell right.

"So you were in the quarry after all?" I scrub a hand through my hair and taste a curse fighting its way up my throat. Not that a safe in the woods is much of an upgrade, but I know I'd have taken the land-locked option without a second thought.

"Drowning," he says succinctly, as if we weren't all thinking it.

"But you don't need air," Elena protests, her voice a tiny, timid whisper of a thing. I can't look at her face, not when I don't even know which time she's thinking of: car or truck. Summer or winter.

Stefan's head moves oddly and I realize his hidden hands are fidgeting, pushing restlessly at one another. My stomach turns uneasily.

"When your lungs are full of air, the capillaries absorb oxygen. When your lungs are full of water, the capillaries begin to explode. Your whole body, actually, absorbs water until everything is bloated. Swollen. And when you are too weak to heal, well…" Stefan contemplates the moody clouds objectively. "Well."

His voice isn't right. Casual like he's blood-glutted, but not cheerful like his switch is off. It's a little too fast, the tones of the sentence not balancing normally.

Elena kneels beside him, her hand wrapping around his ankle beneath the cuff of his pants, and he goes completely still. I don't know if she chose that because it is the only clean place, or just because it was the easiest to reach. My skin itches with the need to pull her away from him, even as memories flood in between us.

Stefan's small ankle, bare and purple with bruising after he tried to jump the canal with me instead of using the bridge. I can still feel the way my neck ached from the pull of his arm as I supported his weight. I tried to carry him home and couldn't make it. He was too heavy for me and he ended up having to hobble back while I held him steady. I remember ribbing him about his hopping technique to try to keep him from crying.

I blink and shake my head, fighting to keep from staring at Elena's hand.

"Stefan, all that's over now," Elena reassures him. "We're going to hide you from Silas until we figure out what he's up to."

"How'd you get out, anyway?" I ask him. "Bank robber kit out of a crackerjack box?"

His mouth twitches. "When the safe started moving I thought maybe you'd had Liz dredge the quarry because you hadn't heard from me. But instead of stopping when it hit the shore, it lifted up and jolted around."

"Like you were in a truck?" I ask, puzzled. I'd looked for tire tracks and hadn't found any.

"Nope," Stefan says, popping the p. "More like Silas compelled people to carry it. He opened the safe himself." He makes a disgusted sound. "Guess he wanted to make sure I was suffering sufficiently."

"How'd you get away?" Elena asks, her brow furrowing.

"I guess he thought I'd be farther along in the desiccation process. Expected me to be slower. He had his humans fetching shovels to bury the safe, but I caught one." His face goes blank and his voice speeds a hint more. "By the time I was finished, they were all gone. Everyone was gone."

"Did you try to catch Silas?" Elena asks. "Damon says he's no faster than most humans."

Stefan's mouth twists bitterly. "I wasn't after Silas."

"Well," I say into the silence. "Anybody for pizza? Maybe shower and a pizza? Or a pizza, an AA meeting and a little dry shampoo for the newly water phobic?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Stefan says, and I close my eyes. He chuckles, the pitch too high, the sounds too close together.

That's my brother for you. Too much of everything. It's been his problem for every breath of his long life.

"I don't need a lecture, Damon. I just want to lay here, and be dry and feel…" Stefan laughs, the sound as dry as old newsprint. "Feel alive."

I look down at my blood-encrusted brother and I can hear four kinds of birds in the imported landscaping trees around us and smell the musty hint of rain on the air that's not coming for hours yet and I'm so tired that I don't know how my legs don't snap beneath me.

"You're not going to lay here and imagine animals in the clouds," I sneer. "You're going to go down the street to Sunnyhill Apartments and suck the whole place dry before they have a chance to collect next month's rent."

I can sense Elena watching me, her grip loosening on Stefan's ankle, but I feel like my face is going to shatter and fall away if I look at her right now. I take a firm hold on my temper.

"How about you come home instead, and we have a whiskey or twelve and a little war council about how the fuck to kill the un-killable man." I stretch my neck stiffly, listening to the pop of my re-aligning vertebrae. "Again."

I can read the nearly imperceptible quiver in his eyelashes, the hollow of his tightening stomach under his ruined shirt. I take a step and nudge Elena out of the way, the relief when her hand drops from his ankle like a single breath against the coming storm.

"I don't want to come home," Stefan says, the words as smoothly weightless as air.

I reach down and grab his arm to haul him up. "Yeah, well in a few months you're not going to _want _to have killed the damned Brady Bunch, Virginia edition. Times six."

Stefan breaks my grip, blurring up to his knees and Elena flinches back, jumping to her feet. I straighten and move to block her view as much as I can, but it is too late.

He looks to her and hurt paints itself across his face. "I never turned it off. I know that's what you thought when you found the body inside but I know better, Elena. I didn't _want_ to." He gulps, swallowing spit or blood or air or his own personal cocktail of lies and half-truths, I'm not sure.

She moves forward with a pained sound, reaching toward him again. My hand shoots out in front of her without a thought forming in my head. My fingers catch the now-familiar curve of her jean-clad hip and hold firm. She's not getting any closer right now. Not for any-fucking-thing on this earth.

"I didn't want to be nothing but hungerin a world without food. I wanted…" his jaw clenches on the words and his head snaps back. An eighth of an inch maybe, nothing a human would register, but I know. I know.

When you flip the switch, all that's left is the kind of visceral, animal pleasure that flattens a little more every time. And scorn, for everyone and everything else. I can still feel the echo of it, like Lexi's desperate voice on a scorchingly sunny rooftop.

His eyes raise to hers again and I want to cover them because I know what he's begging her for and I know what he sees in Elena is only guilt, no matter how much forgiveness she lavishes on him.

I don't want him to shatter the mirror he sees in her eyes.

"You've never understood!" he accuses, spittle flying from his lips in his fury. I see Elena's shoulders wilt in my peripheral vision and something passes in the look between her and Stefan that I don't quite catch.

I stop breathing. I'm drawing up, my weight on the balls of my feet and in the hand that holds Elena back. He's glutted with blood and all I've had is a bag I was too busy to heat up, yesterday afternoon. This isn't the way this shit was supposed to go down.

Her breath jags and soft, slender fingers cover mine.

I'm hurting her, I realize in a single corner of my crystal-sharp thoughts. I loosen my grip, but I don't look away from my brother, even when his mouth twists and I realize he's not going to attack.

His lips tremble and then he crumples. I nearly reach to catch him but he sprawls safely, cushioned with the healing power of all his stolen lives but awkward still, collapsed on a lawn that doesn't belong to us.

A dry sob chokes out of his throat and lingers, suffocatingly.

"Shit," I say. "Stefan…"

"Stefan," Elena says softly, as if she's picking up the sentence I don't know how to finish. "This isn't you. It's a part of you, I know that now, but not the part that matters. Not the part," she tells him, her voice going coarse and urgent as she leans toward him, straining my hold on her, "that will win."

He shakes his head, hard, a silent cough of a laugh crossing his face and leaving only brittleness in its wake.

"I haven't always been like this," he says, his voice falling until it is something precarious and quiet that crawls gooseflesh up the back of my neck. I can feel Elena trembling, sinking a little beneath the weight of his gaze, his need.

"I've been kind. Generous. Selfless. I've saved lives," he beseeches her. "But when I was drowning, none of those things brought me as much pleasure as blood would have. I've struggled for over a century, bouncing between my best and worst selves. I think it's time," he half-clears his throat, his eyebrows faltering. "To stop. And enjoy the life I have left."

I can hear the blades of grass tearing as he clutches at the ground, dirt and blood and skin grinding in underneath his fingernails. His face contorts, as if he's going to cry or maybe scream.

"I just want to feel _better, _okay? After 145 goddamn years, I just want to feel something that isn't _guilt_ or _pain_ or _fear_ or _rejection_ or _loneliness_." He's panting with the force of the words being expelled from his body, staring up at me as if he's begging for something I alone can grant. "Doesn't everybody deserve that much?"

I can feel the muscles tightening around my empty lungs, preparing for the kind of fight I know how to finish. Not like this one.

"Maybe you can teach me how to drain them but let go before they die," he says, his voice high and desperate, the syllables cracking like ice.

The birds don't seem to know the party has been called off for the day. The notes of their calls are crisp, arrowing through the air over and over again. Elena's not breathing. I need to get her the fuck out of here, need to take her somewhere she can never hear this, hear him.

"I didn't break them, Damon," Stefan pleads. "The people inside. I left them whole this time. I could learn."

Elena makes a sound and for all the ways I know how to listen for her, I don't know if it is a whimper or a gag.

"Go," I tell her without taking my eyes off my brother, and my voice falters. "Please go, and wait for me at the car, or the house, or your dorm. I'll find you, after."

She's steady beneath my touch and I don't know how to make her move, don't know how to protect them both.

Stefan's eyes flicker as he laughs, shortly.

"But then, what's the point? God knows my evil doppelganger isn't going to let me live long once I've served whatever purpose he has for me."

"Probably needs to sacrifice you and Katherine with a #2 pencil eraser and a magic hand mirror and it will destroy doppelgangers for all time," I joke, but my voice sounds like it got tangled up in steel wool and I refuse to clear my throat and give myself away.

Stefan's eyes lighten, just for a second, and he shrugs. "I'm not entirely convinced that being his whipping boy is the balance to his power that the witches were hoping for."

I laugh, surprising myself, and Elena's fingers relax and settle in between mine, our hands cradling and protecting her hip and suddenly I think a pizza might not be out of the question, but then he lies back onto the ground, moving stiffly like it hurts and the air curdles in my lungs.

"I'm going to feel good," he insists and my shoulders slump.

He's trying so hard, and he doesn't stand a fucking chance. He won't ever know the joy of blood like I do because as much as he loves the glow of the feed, he's too much himself to keep looking at the sky instead of the graveyard he left behind him.

In a minute, his smooth brow will crumple, his whole face will fall, and he'll start to cry. And he'll beg, as if I could erase what he's done, as if anybody could. I've thrown away a three hundred dollar pair of boots before, so I didn't have to wash the stains of his tears off them.

Fuck my dignity.

I hit my knees beside my brother and when I look up at the girl watching us with tears gleaming in her beautiful eyes, I give up trying to hide.

"Please, Elena. Just go. Don't make him remember that you saw him like this."

Stefan laughs up at the clouds, half-oblivious to us as the pain begins to tug at the corners of his eyes. "I dumped out the safe," he finally whispers, only to me. "I couldn't leave his body in the water, after–"

"Hey, the whole family's here. Isn't that nice?" The duplication of his voice messes with my ears for a second, but when Elena streaks to stand in front of us, reality sets in like a boot in the teeth.

I slam to my feet and hope Stefan has the sense to run before Silas has a chance to get inside his head again.

My brother's doppelganger smiles, and it's the Ripper grin I know so well.

Fuck me, I don't need this today.

I blink, and the light has faded into a stormy twilight. Stefan stands beside me, his face clean of blood. His brow furrows as we share a quick look. The birds have all fled.

Silas raises his hand for a short, two-finger wave paired with a smarmy smile. "You all take care now." He turns, and strides toward the road without another word.

"Um…" Elena shifts uneasily on my other side. "What the hell just happened?"

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_Author's Note: Huge gratitude to Goldnox, for helping me with not only the plastic surgery on this chapter, but the kidney transplant, double bypass and those lovely artificial hips we added at the last second. No gratitude to Stefan, who is the bane of my writerly existence. _

_Anybody out there having trouble finding quality new TVD fanfiction? Try kindleworldsvampirediaries dot com, a blog started by a fabulous fanfiction author from our community here, mrsl488. She does in depth, frequently hilarious reviews of the fanfiction available on Amazon's Kindle Worlds, which means her blog is now the easiest way to find the best of the best in TVD fanfiction. Check her out, and I guarantee you'll find at least one of your new favorite books through her site. _

_Push that follow button if you don't want to miss the sweet Delena in the next chapter… _

_Also, little known fact, pushing the favorite button deposits karma points straight into your karmic account. Try it, it feels fantastic. _


	3. One Door Swinging Open

_Author's Note: How much do I love you guys? I worked a 13-hour day yesterday and instead of going to bed, I stayed up to edit this chapter so I could post. Your reviews for the last chapter made my whole week!_

_And how much do we love Goldnox today? I'll give you a hint: she waved her magic plot-wand and helped me keep a plot twist (coming in Chapter 3!) that I love more than Christmas and my birthday combined. And that you, dear readers, I suspect might be a teensy bit fond of as well._

_Thanks girl, for my sanity, my talent, and my Chapter 3 (and my Chapter 15, and for cutting my Chapter 8, and for loving my other Chapter 15, and my other Chapter 3. And for knowing that I'm talking about four different books now, and which ones)._

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**Chapter 2: One Door Swinging Open**

**ELENA**

When the Camaro purrs to a stop in the last open spot in my dorm parking lot, I pop my door open before the engine even shuts off because I know if I don't, I'm not getting out at all. The warm leather of his passenger seat wraps my shoulders like I'm the only one who's ever sat in it.

The too-low back of my wheeled desk chair upstairs just can't compete, and after Silas's little mind trick, I need the comfort. He could have compelled all three of us to kill each other right there, but he didn't. The terrible part is we don't know exactly what he did tell us to do, in the long moments none of us remember.

Damon pops the trunk before he gets out and as I lift my suitcase, I feel as if its whole weight settles into my stomach instead. I find myself staring into the empty compartment, jumper cables coiled neatly to one side and held in place with a pristine white zip tie. They're lying on top of a folded sheet of plastic and a collapsible shovel. I know they're for corpse disposal and even still I can't begin to sort out all the feelings I have, staring at this mundane assortment of trunk inhabitants.

"What, do I have a village of gnome people cropping up in there again?" Damon peers over my shoulder with interest. "Damn it, I paid the exterminator for the six-month gnome repellant this time. I'm calling for a refund."

I turn and grab him around the waist, knocking him back a step with the ferocity of my hug. The idea of my waiting dorm room is a cold, dark place in my thoughts and I push it away with all my strength. This is exactly why I didn't let Damon drive me to Whitmore for move-in day.

I squirm my head in below his chin, ignoring the stinging behind my eyes as his hand settles onto my back, his strong fingers filling the hollow between my shoulder blades.

"I love that you zip-tie your jumper cables," I whisper hoarsely, and there's a hint of a hesitation before Damon chuckles, the sound rumbling through my chest as though it is coming from both of us.

"I'd be happy to find some more creative uses for zip ties if you're so fond of them," he murmurs into my ear, trickling gooseflesh down the line of my neck, leaving me so sensitive that the push of a breeze trailing by makes me shiver.

I pull back and the sight of his customary smirk makes it easier for my lips to find their way to a coy smile.

"You don't have to resort to bondage to reclaim your dignity."

His eyes flash with heat, and then settle into an amused gleam as his brief smile affords me a glimpse of healthy white teeth. "I've got a reputation to uphold here. And I didn't even make the whole seven minutes in heaven for your welcome home party."

I grin and step close enough that the breath of my words teases the skin of his throat, which I happen to know is every bit as over-actively sensitive as mine. "You made it up to me."

He uses a single fingertip to carry the curtain of my hair back to hook it behind my ear as he bends to whisper, "I could make it up to you all over again."

"You said–" Embarrassingly, I have to clear my throat to continue, and I get another peek at Damon's perfect teeth as a lazy grin crosses his face. "You said you couldn't come upstairs."

He clicks his tongue and steps back, leaving me to try to subtly catch my breath. "Right. Detox duty calls." His jaw flexes once and then he covers it with a wink. "But I have you reserved for some tawdry tie-on-the-doorknob-twin-bed sex this weekend, for sure. Gotta give those other co-eds an audible standard that they should be aspiring to in their own sex lives."

I roll my eyes, blushing. "Somehow I don't think my roomie is going to be too excited about that."

Damon grins. "Oh no! Do you think I'll inspire another lecture on the dire consequences of my bad influence on you?" He drops his voice to a mocking velvety pitch on the words "bad influence" that makes my mouth go dry. He's used that tone on me before.

_It's right. Just not right now. _

_It's not dirty if you like it, Elena._

I swallow hard. Yeah. It's safe to say I'm a sucker for that voice.

Damon adjusts his belt and I'm not sure, but I think I saw his Adam's apple bob once. "You sure I can't talk you out of the higher education experience? Student loans are a bitch and besides," he tilts his head, his eyes sliding away from me the way they do when he's afraid to be too serious. "Ignorance is bliss."

"Damon." I wait until he looks at me. "I forgave you for lying about Jeremy's expulsion and I meant it. I'm not mad."

"Yeah, somewhere in the all-I-can-think-about-is-killing-you and leg stabbiness, I might have missed that little point."

I move forward and frame his face in my hands, because sometimes Damon listens to my touch more than my words. I make my hands steady but tender when I say, "I'm not going to live like that anymore." His brother's name is loud in the pause between us but I know better than to speak the comparison, and it would be cruel since I know Damon is already thinking it.

Today, every day, whether I am or not.

"You have to trust me. The way I rely on you to take care of Jeremy, you have to respect that I'm strong enough to deal with whatever drama or..." I almost say emergency but the word falters, the way I always miss a step when a siren pops on in the distance. "With whatever happens," I tell him, trying to make my voice as strong as my words.

He covers my hands with his own and opens his mouth, and then closes it again and I can hear him swallow a sigh. "I know," he finally tells me.

"And I'm–"

This time the sigh makes it all the way out and he squeezes my hands before letting me go. "I know, I know, you're less than ecstatic that Jeremy's on the run from Silas with Katherine. But _you _need to trust your brother. He's all hunter-y now," Damon says, waving his hands mockingly as if it's a dirty word. "Which is at least useful for keeping wimpy human Katherine under wraps. Especially since they're on the same side. With her in the driver's seat and Jeremy riding shotgun, it'll be a frosty day in hell before Silas tracks them down."

He slams the trunk and turns to me with the kind of practiced, one-sided smirk that reminds me of his first week in town. "Besides, as long as they're playing road trip, I've got the house to myself. Bachelor pad reinstated." He does a slow-mo fist pump and rolls his eyes in feigned ecstasy.

"So glad to hear your den of iniquity has been restored," I say dryly. "I'll just be, you know, over here," I hook my thumb at my dorm entrance, "suffering through freshman lit and dealing with yet another creepy professor who knows too much about the v-word."

Damon pouts unconvincingly. "Poor girl." He slips both hands under my hair, lifting it away from my back so he can slide his palms from my shoulders down to the curve of my lower back, urging me closer. "If it makes you feel any better, I have to interrupt my iniquitous bacheloring for a fucking parent teacher conference tomorrow to discuss Jeremy's 're-integration' and progress in his fake therapy visits."

He rolls his eyes.

"Between that and all the dropping people off at school that I've been doing, I might as well trade in the Camaro for something with a little more soccer ball cargo capability and a little less engine."

I give him a playful smile. "The insurance check comes on Monday. Go wild."

He scoffs. "Please. The Gilbert family has a fatal shortage of cars right now, and P.S. Liz and I reported yours stolen now that we know Silas has been driving it instead of Stefan. I'm off to buy Jeremy the highest safety-rated SUV in its class. For the second time in three months." He frowns. "Though frankly the airbag performance was a little subpar on that last wreck."

I wince. "Damon, please can we not talk about my brother like he's a crash test dummy?"

His hands tighten against my back. "Believe me, I was hoping for a little more Jason Bourne action at the time."

"Add that to the vampire hunter training curriculum," I whisper into his neck.

He groans, shifting his hips away from me. "Jesus, I've got to get out of here. I'm starting to feel the urge to add to my bachelor's degree collection and the last thing the world needs is more liberal arts graduates."

I poke him in the side. "Bite your tongue. Education is a positive thing."

He tilts his chin to look down at me, eyes gleaming. "And the only reason I have so much of it is because of tempting young things like you. Who says penises aren't good at making life decisions?"

"You're disgusting," I tell him, snuggling back into his chest for just one more hug.

"I know," he agrees happily.

I half-sigh, half-groan as I push him away, but he ambushes my lips before I can complete the movement, and then I don't stand a chance.

The thing about Damon is that he never kisses the same way twice, and he's never, _ever _in a hurry.

He can be urgent, rough, demanding, but I've never once gotten an absentminded little peck from him on his way to something else. When he kisses me, there's nothing else in his world, and it completely erases mine.

This time, he nibbles his way up my bottom lip and melts a breath into my mouth that tastes just like him. He tilts his head a little so his nose nuzzles my cheek, like he's reminding me that he's here, that he's with me.

As if I could ever forget.

And then he takes me, his tongue sweeping in over mine and wrenching every muscle in my body tight, clenching against the pressure he builds so effortlessly inside me, the ache starting down low and burning up through my chest, my throat, flushing across my cheeks and my needy lips that are begging for the more he's already giving me.

He hisses as my nails flex against the dark denim of his back pocket and I feel the sting when his fangs begin to sharpen.

He lets his head fall back on his neck, eyes drooping closed. I can see the pulse speeding in the hard line of his throat and I want to taste him, to keep his scent inside of me like a secret that I can hold onto when I watch him drive away.

I hide my face against his chest and grit my teeth against the scratchy ache at the back of my tongue, the hot tickle of veins beneath my eyelashes.

"God, I suddenly want a philosophy degree," Damon groans, and my laugh catches me off guard.

His fingers find mine and they tangle together, our hands held between us for a quiet, stolen moment, my guilt already creeping in around the edges as I picture what he's going back to.

Damon drops his cheek to the top of my head, the beginnings of his afternoon stubble snagging the strands of my hair as if they, too, are reluctant to let go.

"Stop worrying," he tells me in a low voice and I bite my lip, trying for an upbeat tone.

"Maybe I was just thinking about playing hooky and taking you for an ice cream."

"Maybe I was thinking about joining the PTA," Damon counters, pulling away with a sardonic bob of his eyebrows. "Stefan will be fine. He'll be off the wagon until he's back on and there's no point in you following him all around Virginia like a mobile guilt trip unit."

"Promise you'll call me if you think I can help?" I press, new worries piling upon the old. "I…helped before," I remind him reluctantly.

"Sometimes," Damon says, his voice so matter-of-fact that I know I've hurt him. "And sometimes, nothing helped." He tosses his keys and catches them with a hard snap of metal.

Chicago hangs between us like I'm still wearing the clothes he dressed me in to tempt Stefan last year. I don't know what it cost him to use me as bait, but he's definitely not interested in a repeat.

"You're gonna be around a long time, Elena," he tells me. "You've got to start learning to roll with Stefan's little episodes if you don't want to end up like him, buying a new diary every six months to catch all your mopey little tears."

He gets into the Camaro and without a word, starts to back it out. I grab the top of his door.

"Wait!"

His bottom lip purses irritably as he bites the inside of it, his chin jutting forward. "Elena." He offers me one of his false little closed-mouth smiles. "I've got this. Stop fussing. Stef and I are old hands at this dance. We know _all _the steps."

"I know," I tell him, swallowing down all my doubts because he's right. If anyone can help Stefan, it won't be me. It'll be his brother.

I lean down to his open window. "It's not your fault," I tell him fiercely. "Silas did this. Stefan didn't go on a binge because of us, because we're happy. He did it because Silas starved him and there's nothing you could have done to stop it." I kiss him hard on his surprised lips. "I love you."

I push away to standing, wrapping my arms around myself as if it's cold outside. "I'm sorry you have to do this," I say quietly, not raising my voice because I know he'll hear.

He blinks once. "Well, detox duty still beats the fucking parent teacher conferences." He says it offhandedly, but his delivery's a little shaky.

"Call me," I tell him.

"Booty call me," he volleys back, and winks, revving the engine before he takes off.

I squeeze myself tight as I watch him go, missing Ric so badly that it makes my teeth ache. What I wouldn't give for one person, just one person in Mystic Falls that I could trust to look after Damon while he's looking after everyone and everything else.

I sigh and push the thought away before it can kick off another chorus of the Guilt Symphony and Orchestra inside my head, reminding me of all the reasons I'm a selfish bitch to decide I have to attend college _right now_.

I heft my suitcase and head upstairs.

Alone.

**X X X**

Caroline swivels in her desk chair when I let myself in, her smile tentative.

"Hey," she says, her eyes dark with sympathy, though I can tell she's trying to look upbeat for me.

"Hey," I say on a sigh, dropping my suitcase just inside the door as it thumps closed behind me, shutting out an excited squeal from Hadleigh down the hall whose every word is three octaves higher than a human voice should ever be.

Caroline crosses the room and pulls me into a hug, her arms so much stronger now than they were when we were growing up. But her hair still smells the same and something about it reminds me that Stefan smelled the same, too, under the scent of blood and boggy water. I didn't even realize it until now.

A sob catches in my throat and I swallow hard, wishing Damon had stayed a little longer.

"At least Stefan's out now, right?" she offers, pulling back to search my face. "I mean, we can help him get the blood under control again, we've done it before. The important thing is that he's home," she says firmly.

I nod and swallow again, pasting on a smile for her, and her lips tug down at the corners.

"Oh, Elena…"

"No, you're right," I tell her, pulling my shoulders back and tossing my hair, the pink streak catching my eye as if to remind me of what it felt like to be carefree. "We know where he is, and he's safe, and Damon will keep him from doing anything else he'll regret. So, onwards and forwards. Tomorrow it's back to class and normal college life." I pick up my suitcase and toss it so it lands on my bed across the room, the springs of my twin bed clashing in loud protest.

Both our phones chime in unison and I pull mine from my pocket and groan when I see that it's from Damon.

"I swear, it doesn't matter how many times I tell him not to text and drive, he just _never listens_," I growl, skimming the message.

_**Don't forget to tell Vampire Barbie that she's Babysitter Barbie this week.**_

"What's he talking about babysitting for?" Caroline asks, frowning down at her phone. Mine chimes again.

_**And no, I'm not texting and driving. I stopped to buy zip ties. ;-)**_

I laugh in spite of myself, and text back.

_**Love you too**_

Caroline looks suspicious. "Is Damon worried that Silas might show up here again?"

I sigh, my smile fading as quickly as it came. "Not exactly. He sort of already did."

Caroline waves her hand and takes a sip from a bottle on top of her dresser. "Yeah, and then you guys played some really rough and ready bondage. Like I could scrub it from my memory." She raises her eyebrows seriously. "Elena, whips are way more fun than a fireplace poker, I swear. You can get these really cute little riding crops online with a tiny feather at the–"

"Oh my GOD!" I shout, covering my ears. "Stop, stop stop! It's been a long enough day without all that."

She grins, bouncing a little on her toes. "Made you laugh."

"Wait, is that Protein Water?" I snatch it out of her hand and then give her a look.

"What?" she protests, grabbing it back. "I'm craving iron and it's supplemented."

I try to hold back my laugh and fail miserably. She glares. "I'm blending, okay? This is what college girls drink."

"Uh-huh," I tell her, unconvinced, and go to unzip my suitcase. I packed a ton of stuff because I thought it would take us longer to find Stefan. I perch next to it, grimacing at the feel of the table-hard mattress. I could have used another few days sleeping on Damon's perfect bed.

"Well, be in bed by ten, and no watching Arrow," Caroline instructs. "That show is way too racy for you."

"What?" I pause with an armful of tank tops, confused.

She plops her hands on her hips and looks at me like I'm stupid. "I'm _babysitting." _

I roll my eyes at her joke, but the idea of explaining it all makes me want to burrow in under the covers and never come out.

"Silas showed up right after we found Stefan, and we think he compelled us," I tell her, dumping the shirts back in my drawer without bothering to fold. Wrinkled tank tops are way down on my priority list right now. I go back to my suitcase.

"What do you mean you _think _he compelled you?" Caroline asks.

"He said hi and then he just left and it was obviously way later in the day," I say wearily. "Plus, from what Stefan said, he was planning on burying the safe and something must have changed his mind after Stefan escaped because he could have just taken him again."

When I turn back to the dresser, Caroline's already there, carefully re-folding my tank tops. I try to nudge her out of the way with my hip so I can put my socks away but she just gives me the look and I sigh and wait, hugging the pile of clean socks to my chest.

"So whatever he wants with Stefan, he probably compelled you guys to help him with it, but none of you remember what he said," Caroline summarizes, arching an eyebrow at me. It looks like she got them waxed while I was gone this weekend. At least one of us managed something useful. I bet she's all caught up on her homework, too. "So, do you have a strange urge to go find Katherine?"

I frown. "No, but you should probably take any calls that come in from Jeremy, just in case."

Caroline finishes and steps out of my way with a smile. "Okay, Elena Watch engaged. It's a good thing we took so many of the same classes."

"Can we not talk about Silas anymore tonight?" I ask, heaving the pile into a drawer.

One balled pair rolls onto the floor and Caroline picks it up and drops it into the dresser with the others. I slam the drawer.

"I just want to be a real college girl and only stress about the fact that none of my homework is done, and drink weird, overpriced water and ogle all the athletes here on scholarship, you know?" I appeal, spreading my hands.

Caroline folds her arms.

"What?"

"Nothing," she says, turning away and fussing with the highlighters gathered on her desk.

"Caroline, what?" I demand, grabbing her arm to turn her back toward me. "Just say it."

"No, it's just that…" she toys with a blue highlighter, then peeks up at me through her lashes. "If you would have told me that Silas compelled you last weekend, it would have made a lot more sense."

I frown, my chin tilting down. "What do you mean?"

"Come on, Elena!" Caroline throws her arms out and they slap down at her sides. "You weren't even this boy crazy back before your parents died. And the parties? Yeah, okay, we're both way overdue for a few of those but you're all about them until we get there and then you just like…stall out or something."

"What are you talking about?" I scoff, pulling out my phone to see if Damon texted again, but he hasn't. I guess he still has to drive all the way home, though. I stuff my phone back in my pocket before Caroline notices that it didn't ring.

"You spent the whole bonfire grilling Jesse about our professor," she says scornfully. "I know it's been a while, Elena, but that's not exactly normal party behavior."

"Professor Maxfield knows something," I insist. "And I drank beer. Plenty of beer!"

She doesn't respond, and I just glare. Her lips quirk and she presses them together, trying to hold back her smile.

"God!" I moan, flopping back onto my bed. "You're impossible!"

Caroline comes over and nudges my legs over so she has room to sit next to me.

"Elena," she says gently.

I yank my pillow over my face. "I know that voice," I grumble.

"Elena," she persists. "What is this really about? With the boys and the sudden fixation on parties and that weird, like, freakish giggle that you suddenly have?"

I gasp and swing the pillow at her. "Did you just call me a freak?"

She catches it and rolls onto her stomach, propping her chin up on my pillow so she can look at me. I kick my suitcase off the tiny bed to make space for both of us, and she rolls her eyes and imitates a shrill, half-hysterical giggle.

I scowl harder, trying to yank the pillow away from her but she hangs on tight, her fake laugh collapsing into a real one that threatens to pull a smile onto my lips.

"I do not sound like that," I gripe.

"Yeah," she argues. "You do." She tilts her head, her eyes softening. "What's going on, Elena? You definitely know how to be the life of the party, but not like this. It's like you're–" She hugs the pillow tighter in a kind of shrug. "Trying too hard or something."

"What?" I exclaim, sitting up, outraged. I grab for the top of the pillow again and shove at her shoulder to try to jostle her off the bed, but she ducks her head with a shrieked giggle, curling around it protectively. I throw my arms around her, scrabbling for purchase on the pillowcase. Just as I grab it the sound of the door startles both of us and I freeze.

A guy with a crewcut blasts through the doorway and then pauses, his mouth hanging slightly open, a smile frozen on his lips. "Uh, you're not Bel–"

"No," Caroline says frostily, sitting up and smoothing her hair. "We're not."

"Hey, were you like…" his words fade and trail off in the face of Caroline's withering stare. "Never mind." He closes the door behind him, but we can still hear him tell his friend, "Dude, there were like two hot lesbians in there, starting to…you know."

"Hot lesbo action!" Another voice hollers down the hall, and whoops answer him from farther away.

"I swear to God," Caroline says through her teeth, "if anybody comes through that door right now, I'm not going to be responsible for the freshness of my next meal."

"We should have compelled ourselves into the upperclassman dorm like Damon said," I sigh.

"I thought he wanted us to get that off-campus apartment with the private hot tub?" she asks.

"That was his first choice," I admit. "Well, no, actually his first choice was for him to move up here with Jeremy so he could finish high school in a town where he didn't have to tell everybody he tried to fake his own death."

Caroline looks down and picks at my bedspread.

"I want him to learn that he can't just run away from his problems," I protest. "And he's had enough change. Mystic Falls is the only stability I have left to offer."

"Well, I'm glad you decided to come with me this year," she says. "Even though I know Damon tried to talk you out of it."

I grab a jacket out of my suitcase and ball it under my head to replace the pillow Caroline stole. "Everybody keeps saying that we have forever but that's the point, you know? I can always get more education later, but I want to go to college while I still _feel _young enough to enjoy the experience."

"Exactly." Caroline nods emphatically.

I blow out a long breath, looking up at the swoop of the ceiling. "I don't know if I even remember how to have fun anymore. I mean, it's easy when I'm with Damon. Everything is still so new and exciting and–" I know Caroline doesn't want to hear this, so I skip ahead. "But when I'm alone sometimes I just feel kind of…wrung out."

"Because you're_ trying_ too hard," my roommate says again. "Fun is about letting go, and you're still holding on, to Jenna and Alaric and what it felt like when your parents were still alive." She nudges my hip with her shoulder. "Believe me," she says huskily, "I know. But you can't hold on forever."

"Kind of like you're holding on to Tyler?" I raise my eyebrows at her.

"Touché," she admits, and the tension breaks as we burst into laughter that shakes my little dorm bed until it creaks.

When we finally subside, relaxing into the puff of my brand new comforter, Caroline reaches out to tuck a strand of hair away from my face.

"You still have a family," she says gently. "It's not wrong to feel like your life is okay now, that you're okay even without the ones you've lost."

The word burns in my chest like it doesn't belong there. How am I okay without Alaric making the coffee pot overflow, without Jenna's afterthought attempts to parent me, and the embarrassing squeal of her laugh when she thought something was really funny? Without the faint hint of lavender that always lingered in the house when my mom was still alive, and the way my dad would make me pancakes in animal shapes even after I started wearing a training bra and sneaking Bonnie Bell glitter lip glosses into my backpack?

But I won't argue with her about the dead, not when there is so much wrong with the ones left alive.

"Caroline, Stefan may be out now but he's bingeing and he doesn't want to stop," I argue. "How is anything about that okay? You know what he's capable of and Damon hasn't always been able to stop him."

"It's not you who's on a binge," she tells me, her eyes level on mine. "Take it from a control freak. We can help him but we can't do it for him." She pulls a hand out from under the pillow and wiggles three fingers at me, her eyebrows rising hopefully. "He's had three binges in the past year and we brought him back the last two times without wasting decades. Maybe this is his version of better, you know?"

"My brother's on the run," I remind her. "From a sociopathic psychic immortal. And in the company of my evil twin."

"_You're_ not on the one on the run," Caroline insists doggedly. "And if you showed up to try and help, there's no way Katherine would cooperate. Besides, she's sort of a pro at hiding." She smiles brightly. "Win win."

I have to laugh at that. "Fine. You obviously have an answer to everything."

"I do." She nods decisively. "And if that doesn't work, I have cherry dark chocolate in the fridge." She squirms closer on the bed, jostling me with her hip. "Come on, Elena. Live a little. This is your time." She grins and winks. "Oh, and mine."

I half-laugh, half-sigh and pull her up into a hug. "What would I do without you?"

"Have really scrunched up shirts," she says, the words muffled against my hair.

"The horror," I say dryly.

I squeeze her just a little tighter, because we used to dream about moments like these when we were little girls. And for all the doors that have closed in our faces, this one is just starting to open.

* * *

Author's Note: HUGE NEWS TODAY! Out of My Mind by Jenna Elliot (our very own JWAB) is now available on Amazon Kindle Worlds for less than the price of a drip coffee at Starbucks. It is not only in my top five favorite fanfictions ever, it is an absolute classic of the genre. For taking an incredible prompt from the show and taking it where they never would have been brave enough to go, pushing our favorite characters to their breaking point until all that's left is the most is the flaming, white hot core of each of their personalities. Their most innate truths. And doing it in spare, beautiful language that never falters in its confidence or its unwavering grip on your fascinated mind.

It's a love story, it's a horror story, it's f*cking awesome. Go get yourself a copy, and don't forget to leave a review to support our homegrown fanfiction authors.


	4. Frankenstein

_Author's note: Just a reminder, this story started after 5x02, so we didn't know Nadia was a vampire and in this fic, she isn't._

* * *

**Chapter 3: Frankenstein**

**JEREMY**

There's something about a fire that makes the night beyond its tiny circle of light seem even creepier. It's nearly dawn but I'm still feeding it wood just for something to do. Matt took first watch and he's passed out in the bed of the truck now, even though we set up a tent for Katherine. Between her bitching and constant nose-blowing, I don't think she put in a single tent stake herself, but at least she's quiet now.

It's been a long boring day of driving and an even longer night of sitting, and I still can't stop thinking about my encounter with Silas. A hatchet fight will do that.

I should have hit him with the hatchet. His dodge wasn't that fast, but my aim was bad. If Damon ever hears about that, he'll never let it go, for sure. A hunter who can't hit a vampire at point blank range? Ha freaking ha.

I started practicing right after Katherine went to sleep tonight. I can stick it every time now, sometimes the blade going deep enough into the wood that it takes several minutes to work it back out. But I still can't always hit the exact mark I want.

The bandaged wound in my left shoulder throbs, but I can tell it's healing faster than it should be. The lingering effect of Damon's blood, maybe, or some other hunter thing Connor never told me about.

There was a moment, when Silas was struggling to catch his balance just like a human, and I got this incredible rush. Like I was actually going to do it, like I was born to. I was going to kill this _thing_, my own murderer who could compel a whole town at once. And then he stabbed me. I tried to hold on to him even while the wood splintered inside my skin. I made it almost a minute, I think, before my left arm went weak and he shook me off.

But I'll get another chance. I'm stronger than him, he even said it himself, and I'm the only one who can resist his mind control. I'll find somewhere to stash Katherine and I'll go after him before he can hurt anyone else.

Elena called last night and kept demanding to know where I was, over and over again. But her voice sounded different and it freaked me out. I got nervous and wouldn't tell her even though I hate to tell her no since everything I put her through last spring.

Not even fifteen minutes later, I got a cryptic text from her and an even weirder one from Damon, telling me not to call them to check in anymore. To send emails or call Caroline, and not to come back, even if they tell me to. Which means I was right and Silas is trying to use them to find Katherine.

Maybe this is the reason I'm still alive, the reason Bonnie was able to bring me back. What if I'm the only one who can stop Silas?

I get up, too jittery to sit still.

I want to talk to Bonnie about all this, in case she can help me figure out the best way to take on Silas. Or to see if she knows if there are any of the Five left alive right now who might be able to help me. But I haven't seen Bonnie since yesterday when she begged me to keep her secret. We were leaning closer and I almost forgot I couldn't kiss her. And then she was just gone.

I know what she's thinking.

The guilt of the name hangs between us all the time, though neither of us ever says it. Bonnie doesn't want to be like Anna, but she doesn't want to be alone either.

I snap a twig off a bush, breaking it into tiny pieces that I flick at trees as I pass. Every time I hit one I feel a jolt of pride, a tiny kick of adrenaline. Every time I miss, the knot in my stomach draws a little tighter.

Maybe it would be easier for me if ghosts were all transparent, like in the movies. But they look exactly the same to me as real people. And sometimes, they can even feel real. But for as much as they seem like a part of life still, they aren't. Things change, and they don't.

I told Anna she had to move on, but that's not really what you do when you die. I didn't know that then, didn't know what it was like to be dead. To just hang there in that strange in between place. Doing nothing. Going nowhere.

I'm not going to force Bonnie to do that.

I get why she doesn't want to tell anybody. This summer, Elena started to smile again, that vertical line between her eyebrows finally smoothing out. She doesn't walk like an old person anymore, all heavy steps and straight lines. I don't want to ruin her happiness any more than Bonnie does.

But we can't hide Bonnie's death forever.

And when the truth comes out, everybody's going to know what I did.

The fire's smoldering low, so I look for something to burn so I won't have to think about Bonnie. Most of the wood on the ground is rotten, so I reach out and pull a branch off a dead pine. It makes a sharp snap and that sounds right somehow, satisfying. I do it again, picking a bigger branch. When it comes off easily in my hand, I smile slightly, but then it sours on my face.

If I'd been stronger in that cave on the island, none of this would have happened.

The worst part about it is that I'm the only one who knows, so I'll have to look in their eyes when I tell them that Bonnie is gone so they could have me instead. I'm going to have to know which they would have rather had.

They'll say it's okay, but I know the truth. When Klaus wanted to drain Elena in his ritual, we could have finished him then but no one but Damon was willing to sacrifice Bonnie. Not even for Elena.

I grab a branch as wide around as my bicep, giving it a hard jerk. It's not quite dead yet and it hangs on as I pull, setting the muscles in my back against it. It groans and I dig in my heels, my quadriceps straining to join the fight. When the branch breaks, I stumble and nearly fall on my ass but when I regain my balance, the bark of my prize feels rough and good in my hands.

I'm going to kill Silas, the way I should have the first time I saw him.

"Jeremy?" Matt's voice comes from the direction of the truck. Shit, that was probably really loud. I drop the branch guiltily.

"Sorry, man," I call back as quietly as I can. If we wake Katherine I'll never hear the end of it. "Go back to sleep."

He doesn't answer, and suddenly I hear the rustle of footsteps from much closer than the truck.

"You have some peculiar nighttime habits," an accented voice says. "I could teach you some ways to spend the dark hours that would be more fun."

I turn and the owner of the voice is slender and beautiful, moving with a prowling confidence despite the littered ground of the forest. I whip another branch off the tree next to me, this one smaller and more aerodynamic. The light wood of the broken end looks sharp and hungry in the grey, pre-dawn glow.

She smiles knowingly. "Oh, I'm not a vampire."

"Okay," I say, circling slightly so I'm between her and our campsite. I raise my voice because there's a good chance Katherine will take off when she hears that we have company, but that's still safer than letting her get taken. "So what are you? And _who _are you?"

"I am nothing you've ever seen before," she says proudly, her eyes running over my body in a way that's a little distracting.

I wonder if I should just kill her now. A stake works pretty well to slow down most kinds of supernatural creatures, and nothing that walks out of the woods in the middle of the night with a smile on its face is good news. But I can't bring myself to attack a girl when she's just standing there, talking.

"Nadia?" Matt's voice comes from behind me and I spare a glance for him.

"Wait, you know her?"

He has a weird look on his face and the rifle in his hands, paused halfway to his shoulder. "What did you do to me?" he demands. "You give me back my ring and then I just wake up on the ground? Did you kill me?"

She raises an eyebrow, looking amused. "No, I did not kill you. I protected you. When you saw the monster, Silas, you were able to resist him, yes?"

Matt and I share a look.

"How did you find us?" I demand.

Her smile widens and the way she peeks up at me through her lashes reminds me of Katherine.

"My people have developed…methods of finding what we seek." She tilts her head, her hair spilling down over her thin shoulder, bare despite the chill of the forest . "The question is whether you want those methods to be working for you or against you."

"What are you talking about?" Matt asks suspiciously.

She eyes him with the same primal hunger that was pointed in my direction a moment ago. "I can offer you my protection from Silas' mind control. But I want something in return."

**X X X**

**ELENA **

The flames are thin, but they're everything.

I'm pushing into them over and over again before I can remember why, before I even know where I am. I just know I have to _go,_ have to–

I hear her gasp before I see her, just a drop of blood left at the corner of her mouth, her caramel golden hair still smooth though she shudders against the cold stone where Klaus tossed her down.

"Jenna, _no!_"

He's got her, he's going to kill her and _something _has to stop him because this. Cannot. Happen.

I'm in the flames again before I know it, my flesh scorching as I press against a barrier that isn't made of heat at all. I have no strength against it, no matter how long I burn and I shriek, the sound high and helpless. All week we've been arguing over spells and vampire blood and five hundred year old potions, so many options to save a life. And still, there's not a single one on the other side of the fire for Jenna.

She knows it, her eyes wide and terrified as she looks to me, as if I might be holding something back, some last trick. Klaus raises his hand, his face bright with a terrible, morbid excitement.

And then Klaus' smile melts into Stefan's , blood obscuring his soft, familiar lips as they contort around his fangs and he dives into Jenna's neck. Her scream claws up through the darkness and then cuts off abruptly with a wet sound of flesh tearing like thin paper.

She's gone.

My knees hit the earth, too close to the flames. I burn even as I watch the murky quarry water that drips off Stefan, staining Jenna's clothes.

I raise my hands so I don't have to see what he's doing to her and for the first time I realize I'm holding something. I lift it up to the light, hoping for a weapon, but it's a bottle of Protein Water instead. I pull the top off, the formed threads of plastic shredding under my hands and I pour it on the flames. They only jump higher, the sting of vervain mixing with my burns and I don't care, don't care, don't care.

"Let go," Caroline's voice says, but it's too late. The bottle is already melting onto my hand and when I scrub it against my jeans it only spreads.

"Elena!" she says again, louder. "Elena, stop it!"

Something covers my mouth, suffocating me. I feel my fangs slam down with a dizzying rush and I know I can fight Klaus or Stefan or whoever I need to. I'm not weak anymore.

Not human.

There's a cry of pain and I open my eyes, scrabbling back against my headboard.

"You bit me!" Caroline yelps, cradling her bleeding hand.

My fangs came out so quickly they punctured my lip, too, and the taste of blood is thick and disgusting with Jenna's face still vivid in my mind. I gasp a breath, trembling from my fingertips to my toes.

"Hey, it's okay," Caroline says, reaching for me with her good hand. "It was just a dream, Elena."

Her skin is cool and solid, like Damon's. My fangs begin to blunt, the painful acuity of my vision subsiding along with the black veins.

"Sorry," I manage. "Did I hurt you?"

She shakes her head and reaches into my bedside table, pulling out a packet of wet wipes that I don't remember putting there. "I'm okay," she reassures me, cleaning the blood off her palm and then re-fastening the adhesive flap on the packet of wipes, returning them to the drawer . "Do you want to talk about it?"

I concentrate on my breathing, my embarrassment growing with every moment I'm awake. I'm an adult and a college student and a vampire and I'm still having nightmares, probably screaming the whole dorm awake like a freak.

"No, I'm fine." I give her a shaky smile. "Sorry for waking you."

She smiles tentatively. "No problem, roomie." She squeezes my knee and heads back to her own bed, wriggling down underneath the covers.

I reach down to untangle my sheet, running my hands furtively over my legs, smooth and un-burnt. I settle back onto my pillow and attempt to relax. I have a nine A.M. class and Caroline and I already stayed up way too late talking. I never really feel that tired anymore, but I definitely need a few hours a day where I can just shut my brain off. Especially today.

Caroline's breathing has long since evened out when I finally give up, slinking out of bed and guiltily grabbing my phone as I tiptoe toward the door.

I grip the phone too tightly as I pad down the hall, the floor cool and dusty against my bare feet. The faux wood planks are scuffed with the excited marks of dozens of freshman sneakers and heels and boots and sandals, rushing to squeeze the most out of their first week of college life. I'm the only homesick lurker in the halls, and the idea of waking up Damon right now with my call is the accusingly red cherry on top of my pity party sundae. After the day he's had, he's earned whatever peace he can get.

I duck into the stairwell for privacy and lean against the wall, sliding slowly to the floor as I close my eyes, trying to imagine his voice instead. I can hear his low, throaty, chuckle. The thrill of his fingertips brushing by my earlobe as he sinks his hand into my hair. The dead white of his face when he begged me to leave, to let him shoulder the burden of Stefan all on his own.

Disgust wars with humiliation as my throat closes against the thought. Because I'm here, aren't I? And he's there with his brother who will say terrible things to him, do terrible things that will weigh on Damon's conscience while he pretends to the whole world that he doesn't have one. Stefan killed Andie the last time he was like this, and even though I know it wrecked Damon, all he ever said was that he was having a "bad day." Because he didn't want to ruin my birthday, even though his slipped by a week later and nobody even knew.

I won't call him.

I won't give him another person to look after.

But my finger was resting over his speed dial icon, and my phone is always unlocking itself without warning, and it is ringing before I even open my eyes.

"What's wrong?" His voice is sharp against the music and voices that fade quickly into the background, as if he's striding away from the source of the noise.

"Nothing, sorry, I…" I fumble, shoving my hair back from my face as I wonder frantically if I can pass this off as a pocket dial. Not likely, I guess, as my phone wouldn't really be in my pocket at 4 A.M. Though his apparently was.

"Elena?" It's almost quiet on his end now, matching the crowded emptiness of the dorm surrounding me.

A squeaky, "Mm-hmm?" is all I can manage, tears springing into my eyes as if his voice is the perfect trigger to bring back my whole dream in blinding color, Jenna's fear and blood-stained hair and Stefan's sodden clothes, my heart aching for the thought of him drowning in that safe even as I want to wrench him away from Jenna, to hit him over and over and over again until he _understands_ what he's done, what he's doing.

"Bad dream?" Damon asks quietly.

"Mmm." The sound I force out is even shorter this time and I scrub the heel of my hand angrily across my watering eyes.

He clears his throat. "Was it one of _those _dreams?"

I swallow and sniff back my stupid tears. "What dreams?"

"You know, the ones where you mind-meld with Stefan and you two stay up all night laughing over psychic episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Or, you know–" His staccato voice fades for a second as if he turned his head away from the phone to look at something. "Whatever is playing on the late show of the Psychokinetic Network."

Guilt stabs low in my belly. "No, it wasn't like that." I remember the thinly-veiled look of hurt on his face after I woke up next to him from a dream of Stefan. "I haven't felt that…you know, that weird feeling, since we found the safe."

"Ah," he says, too casually, and clears his throat again. "So, garden variety naked and forgot your homework and rode a polar bear to class kinda thing?"

"Not exactly," I tell him, playing with the hem of my shorts as a smile finds its way onto my lips.

"Garden variety woke up naked and I wasn't there?" he proposes. "Because that would be a nightmare for sure."

"Yeah?" I say playfully, just so he'll keep talking. So I can pretend there's nothing in the world except me and whatever terrible joke he's going to make to hide the growing concern in his voice.

"Re-occurring one, on this end," he says matter-of-factly, and makes a disgusted sound. "Hate that dream. Let's talk about something else. Distract me."

"What do you want to talk about?" I ask him, my smile easing toward a full-blown grin.

"Hmm," he says, and the noise on his end fades a little more as his voice drops, shivering sweetly across my skin as if he's about to propose something dirty. "Favorite episode of Seinfeld."

"I like the Soup Nazi and the one with the Pez dispenser, but you think Master of My Domain is funnier," I remind him.

"It's called The Contest," he counters. "Okay, fine, tell me about your favorite day this summer."

"My _favorite _day?" I consider, tipping my head back against the wall. "Finding out Jeremy was alive."

"Ah, that's too easy," Damon counters. "Next favorite."

"When Jeremy caught the toaster on fire and threw it out the window before I could get back with the fire extinguisher," I giggle. "And you weren't mad about the window, you were mad because you said he threw like a girl. And you guys spent the _whole _rest of the day arguing about throwing form."

"Yeah?" his voice is suspiciously soft. "I would have thought it was the day when we were out running errands and you jumped me and I was forced to break into the backroom of that florist shop. And then you made me pay for the entire shipment of daffodils we ruined."

I laugh. "That one was high on the list, too. Why, was that _your_ favorite day?"

"Nope. But it was up there. I liked–" There's a sharp sound, quickly muffled as Damon covers the speaker of the phone. "Hey, let me call you back."

"Damon? Where are you? You're not at home, are you?"

He pauses for a long moment and I know he's thinking about how to answer without worrying me. "No, Elena," he finally says, very quietly. "I'm not at home and I need to go now."

I swallow hard. "Okay. Be careful, Damon."

"You going to be alright?" he asks gently, but I can already hear his breathing increase, the noise on the other end of the line growing as he strides back toward whatever I pulled him away from.

"Of course," I tell him, making my voice confident so he won't worry. "I love you. Be careful," I tell him again.

"Will do."

He hangs up without another word, because as I've learned, Damon's not one to drop "I love you" at the end of every phone call. But then, he doesn't have to. I hear it every time he says my name, in the way his tongue wraps around each syllable, how he plays with the tones and the inflection so it sounds different every time.

He never said his brother's name tonight, but I know that's where he is, where he'll be every day for a long time coming.

I open up the internet browser on my phone. Damon may not be having the greatest night, but I know it'll make him laugh when he opens the door to a porch full of daffodils tomorrow morning.

I click through, frowning. Can you even get daffodils in the fall in Virginia?

I hear footsteps on the stairs and I glance away from my phone, pushing up to my feet. I should probably go find the common room on this floor so drunk people don't stumble over me on their way home.

"Somebody's up past her bedtime," Stefan's voice says. But when I see who is standing next to him, I know it isn't my ex-boyfriend smiling placidly up at me from the landing.

"That's because she's probably been up, _feeding,_" Alaric growls, a slight five o'clock shadow dusting the upper lip that curls in disgust at the sight of me . "Preying on all the real students. The ones here for an education instead of a bottomless snack bar."

I squeeze my eyes closed so I won't have to look at the ghost image he's built for me. "Ha ha, Silas. Very funny."

"Funny? Hmm," he says. "That wasn't really what I was going for, but then a woman's mind is said to be a mystery." He laughs. "Not to me, of course. You weren't off feeding at all, were you?" He clicks his tongue. "That _is _a nasty dream. Though I'm not sure how ordering flowers is going to fix it for you. Did Jeremy call?"

"No," I tell him hastily, concentrating on the truth of that statement. "I don't know where he is."

"I know you don't," Silas says cheerfully. "Because he wouldn't tell you. But I'm going to take care of that. And in the meantime, you can enjoy the present that Qetsiyah and Esther sent me."

My eyes open again against my will, but I can still see Alaric there in the stairwell, watching me with unadulterated hate . I didn't know why Silas isn't just appearing as Ric himself, but whatever that thing is, it can't hurt me. It's just some kind of hallucination. It's not Ric.

"Oh, it is definitely Ric," Silas counters, and I flinch.

"What do you mean Esther sent him?" I ask warily, certain I'm not going to like the answer.

"Apparently Qetsiyah was disappointed in the success of her hunters, so Esther offered to lend her the more advanced version." Silas smiles, gesturing to Ric. "Who is awfully eager to kill vampires, despite being one himself. Fortunately, we've reached an understanding."

Ric grins and I have to look away, the expression seeming so wrong on a face I have so many good memories of. "They combined their powers to bring me back and this time, I'm not tied to a human life, so it won't be so easy to get rid of me."

"Yeah," Silas bobs his eyebrows at me. "But he's not great company, so I thought I'd leave him to keep you entertained, since you're not proving especially useful for finding Jeremy."

I grit my teeth. "Thanks."

"Oh," Silas says cheerfully. "My pleasure." He sweeps out his hand in invitation, and then turns and walks down the stairs. Alaric doesn't follow, and when he looks at me, the malicious light in his eyes turns my stomach.

I run.

* * *

_Author's Note: Anybody like my surprise? Anybody surprised that I managed to work Alaric into another fic? Screw actor's contracts, I just can't let that boy go! Hope you feel the same. _

_Okay, dear readers, here's your golden opportunity. I'd love to hear from all of you about what you would love to see in Season 5. What themes/relationships/types of conflict you might like to see on the show. What you do or don't like about what they're already doing. And ESPECIALLY what you do or don't like about this story thus far. Not saying I'll take all suggestions but it'll do lots to get my muse back on the job to see what kinds of things you might be wanting to see. Plus, reviews make me happier than a kitten in a yarn factory._

_Also, anybody in the mood for some sweet Delena with sizzling sexual tension and lots of gentle, flirty banter? How about Damon as a sexy sexy therapist and Elena in everybody's dream job, a literary agent? Head on over and check out __**Nightlightbright's "River Deep, Ocean Wide."**__ This is her first story on this site, and she very graciously let me beta and she's immensely, irritatingly talented, and her Delena is the kind of guilty pleasure you hide in a closet to devour with a giant serving spoon when you're supposed to be chomping on your celery snack. So sneak on over there right now, and enjoy!_

_Thanks and many hugs for the painfully accomplished Goldnox and her teleported "toenails," for moving heaven and earth to have this chapter ready for you in time for some lovely Saturday reading, and for truck driver repellant techniques. Oh and for fixing the holy hell out of my first Jeremy POV and tirelessly playing TVD Wikipedia over text messaging to answer over a hundred ridiculous questions a week. And for playing Fairy Plot Godmother and talking me out of deleting this fic. Three times. (and counting). _

_Goldnox also has a new fic out this week, the wretchedly beautiful **"Unthinkable." **It's the kind of story you remember for years, the kind that sneaks into your dreams and commuting-time daydreams. You don't want to miss this one, folks. _


	5. Trading Up

_Speed Recap: So Elena was minding her own business, maybe buying Damon some cheer-you-up-with-a-dirty-inside-joke daffodils and then BLAM her previously-dead vampire-hating guardian is there and he's chasing her down. And cue Chapter 4._

* * *

**Chapter 4: Trading Up**

**ELENA **

I just have to make it back to my dorm room.

We still have Megan's vervain water, and if that's some kind of vampire-zombie-Ric chasing me, it should work on him.

I'm fast now; Damon's been teaching me how to eke every bit of speed out of my new abilities. Even with all of that, Alaric's so close behind me I can feel the growl of his angry breathing. I rip open the door to my room, but he's halfway through it when I slam it closed on his chest, the doorknob catching him in the belly. He grunts through his gritted teeth and then his hand snaps up and wraps around my throat.

"Elena, get out of the way!" I hear Caroline's voice as I'm thrust aside, the movement wrenching my windpipe against his stubborn fingers.

Alaric chokes, releasing me as all the air whooshes out of him at once, the door falling open. He doubles over, hands clutching at the stake embedded in his chest.

"Oh my God, _Ric_?" Caroline squeaks. "I mean, Silas?" She looks at me, horrified. "Silas, right?"

I shake my head, coughing as my throat starts to heal. I manage to point and she hurries to close the door, stooping to push one of Alaric's feet out of the way.

"Sorry," she winces, and I don't know if she's apologizing for stabbing him or for moving his leg or for calling him Silas.

She flips on the light just as Alaric manages to pull the stake out, half-swallowing his groan of pain as he flops back, panting and bleeding all over the rug.

"Thank God," he wheezes. "Elena, I'm so sorry."

"Ric?" Tears sting my eyes for the thousandth time today and I scramble to the closest dresser drawer, pulling out the first thing I touch and blurring back to him, pressing it to his stomach to stop the bleeding.

Caroline's hands fly to her mouth in horror. "I thought he was chasing you, Elena, I'm _sorry_, I didn't see who it was! Wait, but it isn't really, I mean who–" She sputters to a stop when I don't answer, turning toward the fridge instead. "Blood bag?" she looks back to Alaric for confirmation. "Do you want blood?"

He nods weakly and I stretch out my free hand, fingers trembling visibly, to touch his cheek. His stubble is scratchy and I can feel a slightly longer patch where he must have missed it the last time he shaved. His beard always grew so fast.

That's all it takes. I hunch over, a sob ripping out of me as I struggle to hold the wadded bandage in place, my body convulsing as if in protest of every terrible piece of this day.

"Hey," Alaric says, his voice still strained, but stronger now. His big, blunt-fingered hand cups the back of my head and he pulls me close, cradling my face into his shoulder, away from the places where blood stains his shirt. "Hey now."

"Oh, Elena," Caroline sighs, rubbing circles on my back as she reaches across me. "Here, Ric. Careful, I opened it already."

I gulp back my sobs and clamp my teeth shut, shifting away so he can drink. Caroline's already helping him sit up, and in the few minutes it takes him to finish two blood bags and heal the stake wound, I find some Kleenex and manage to pull myself together.

"Okay," Caroline says firmly. "What happened and why were you chasing Elena?"

"She's a vampire," Alaric says weakly, and there are so many emotions in his voice that I have to swallow hard at the sound of it. "Oh God, _Esther_." He drops his head into his hand, pressing hard at his eyes. "What happened?"

"You showed up with Silas, and he said that Esther and Qetsiyah sent you back to kill vampires and then you tried to–" I break off, feeling strangely bad about saying it aloud.

"I go to sleep for _two _hours," Caroline says, exasperated. "Please don't tell me Esther is alive."

"Not exactly," Alaric says grimly. "Look, the two sides of my personality aren't too friendly with each other, and my ah–"

"Your good side?" I supply gently.

"For lack of a more accurate term," he says wryly. "All I know is what Esther told my less sociopathic personality. Apparently when the deal was being worked out, I was my other self. The hunter."

"What kind of deal?" Caroline asks warily.

"Qetsiyah needs someone to pour the cure down Silas' throat and kill him so he'll be stuck on the Other Side. Esther offered me up when all of Qetsiyah's hunters failed, but Esther actually doesn't care how, when or where I kill Silas, as long as I get rid of the Originals along with him. She seems to think the cure will fix them, too, and without Qetsiyah's help she didn't have enough power to send me back."

"Um, isn't she a little pissed at you for you know, killing her?" Caroline asks hesitantly.

"Her task was complete by then," Alaric says, irony heavy in his tone. "She's a weird lady, super focused on doing penance for what she sees as her one great sin, but she's...complicated. It's why she bothers to talk to both sides of me, when everyone else just stays away from me when I'm in my vampire-hating mode."

I don't know what to say to that. Having a split personality disorder would be hard enough on earth, but to be stuck with one in the afterlife too seems just cruel. And we know so many people on the Other Side but do they blame him for what he's done? Is he all alone over there?

I bite my lip against the ache of that thought.

"So you and Crazy Esther are like, friends?" Caroline says skeptically.

Alaric chuckles. "Actually I've been avoiding her as much as I can. But she knew if both sides weren't on board with the plan and I flipped by accident, I wouldn't carry out my duty."

Caroline and I share a look. "Ah..." I start.

Alaric looks chagrined. "I'm not going to hurt you. I never planned to hunt vampires over here at all; I just got caught up in the chase. If Caroline hadn't stabbed me, I don't know what I might have done. Normally I'm better. I've learned to control when I change over."

"What do you mean, change over?" I question, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them. "Like to your evil self?"

His lips twist ruefully. "Yeah, pretty much."

"You can just…do that?" Caroline asks skeptically.

Alaric looks down at the empty blood bags in his lap. "I was on the Other Side. A lot of the people there are vampires and even if none of us have to eat anymore, I didn't want to spend eternity hating everybody on my side of the veil. Especially not–" He clears his throat. "Certain people."

The edges of my chest feel fluttery, like my whole body could just disappear or fly apart in a second. I hug my knees harder. "Like Jenna?" I whisper.

"And Isobel?" Caroline says, looking horrified. "I mean–" She glances guiltily at me. "Sorry, Elena."

"And Isobel," confirms Alaric uncomfortably.

Caroline's curiosity is written all over her face, like a perfect sculpture of Not Asking.

"It's not like life," Alaric appeals, flushing a little. "It's different there. You exist but you don't, um– You just…_are_," he says finally. "Look, I'm not really that good at explaining it. The point is I worked really hard at being able to control which kind of myself I was at any given moment. I can't totally get rid of the bad and it took a lot of work, because you can't really _change_ that easily on the Other Side. But even there, you're still yourself and I'm..." he chuckles humorlessly. "I'm fucked up."

"Well that's Esther's fault anyway!" Caroline bursts out. "Why would you want to help her?"

"I _don't," _he says emphatically. "And I've gotten a little better, sometimes, at knowing what happens when I'm my hunter self, but it's not a perfect system. My hunter side agreed to help them, and the rest of me just," he gestures impotently, looking a little self-conscious. "Lied. Because I wanted to come back. I thought maybe I could help."

"Oh, Ric..." I give him an impulsive hug, his shoulders wide and comfortingly solid. "I'm glad you're back."

He pats my shoulder awkwardly, and then his grip settles and tightens around me. "Thanks, Elena."

"I'm glad you're back, too," Caroline says nervously, "but what's going to happen when Esther and Qetsiyah figure out that Katherine already took the cure? There's no more left."

"Well, actually," Alaric says. "That's not precisely true."

I sit back so I can see his face. "Wait, really?"

"They know Katherine took the cure," Alaric says. "They've been watching everything. But Esther says since Katherine took it, her blood still holds the cure."

"Oh, God." My hands clench, nails digging into my palms.

I forced her to become human and now someone is after her blood all over again. It could have been me, it could have been Stefan, but for it to be Katherine...that's everything she's ever run from. And I know all too well what it feels like to be hunted like a rare animal.

"But there was only one dose of the cure," Caroline is saying. "Is there enough in Katherine's blood to cure all the Originals _and_ Silas?"

"I don't know," Alaric says darkly. "And I don't care. I'm not committing genocide."

"Of course you're not," I tell him firmly. "They can't reach you here. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

Alaric's jaw tightens, and he doesn't meet my eyes. "Yeah."

"Do you want some more blood?" Caroline asks solicitously. "Something to eat?" She takes the used bandage from Alaric, rolling it up with the clean side to the outside.

"I could definitely use a shower," he admits, plucking at his stained and torn shirt as he gets to his feet. He balls his empty blood bags in one fist and tosses them toward the trash can, getting both in on one shot.

"Uh-uh," Caroline chides, and pulls a tiny lidded basket out from under her bed. "Special trash only. This isn't the boarding house, people."

"Right, sorry." He goes to retrieve the bags, looking amused, then pauses, turning them over in his hands. "You know, I think these are the first blood bags I've ever had. The first blood, really, since I transitioned." He looks up at me, his eyes darkening. "It's weird how good it feels, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I tell him quietly. "Weird is definitely one word for it."

My throat tightens in sympathy, but I can still feel the itch of my fangs wanting to descend at the lingering scent of blood. I never wanted this life, for any of us, but now? I can't imagine a world so kind that the only price it asks for us to keep Ric forever is blood bags.

"Hold on," I tell him. "Damon left some of his clothes here for when he comes to visit."

Caroline's frowning down at the rug. "Dang it, this was the last one left in the right shade of purple."

"Sometimes blood comes out if you put cold water on it," I offer.

"Sorry about that," Alaric says. "I can take it into the shower with me, see if I can rinse it out." He bends down and rolls up the rug, standing it on end to lean against his side.

I pull out a towel and my basket of shower supplies and hand them over along with the folded clothes.

Ric presses his lips together and awkwardly takes the pink plastic basket from me, hefting the blood-stained rug in the other arm. "Right."

"It's a tiny shower, but we have our own bathroom," Caroline says encouragingly. "So you don't have to wear shower shoes."

He exhales a little chuckle. "Yeah. Shower shoes." He shakes his head, still smiling, and turns toward the bathroom.

"Wait!" I tell him and he turns back, raising an eyebrow. The look is so familiar that I'm immediately swamped with memories of the summer he spent on my couch, the bickering he and Damon used to do over the proper way to barbecue, the way he always left the sink full of soap scum and tiny hairs.

I grin. "We have to make a phone call first."

Alaric carries the rug and shower basket to the bathroom while I dial.

Damon answers on the first ring.

"Is this a bad time?" I ask him first, biting my lip.

"Nope," he says, sounding much more relaxed. "We have successfully executed a boy's night out. You know, without the whole execution-y part."

A smile settles slowly, widely onto my face. "Are you sitting down?" I ask him next. "Or wait, you're driving. You should probably pull over."

I hear the screech of turning tires, and then the Camaro's engine revs hard. "Where are you?" he asks shortly.

"No, no, I'm fine," I reassure him. "Everybody's fine. I just have somebody I think you should talk to."

"Um, Elena?" Damon says tightly. "Do you remember when we talked about how I don't like surprises unless they come with red lace edging?"

I hand the phone over.

"Hey, buddy," Alaric says. "You just say you're hitting the bars without me?"

The Camaro's engine spikes, and then drops off slowly until I can barely hear it.

And then just, "Ric?"

_So_ much better than daffodils.

X X X

**DAMON**

I'm headed for Whitmore for the second time in twelve hours, the sun is just below the horizon, I haven't had a minute of sleep and I couldn't give the slightest hint of a fuck.

It's gonna be a good day.

When the phone rings, I answer it even though it's illegal to talk and drive because I'm already going forty over the speed limit and I've got plenty of compulsion saved up to pay my traffic tickets. Besides, is there anything more pansy than those little ear-mounted headsets? They're made for douchebags wearing skinny-cut-trousers and carrying knockoff Monte Blancs in their un-scuffed briefcases. Though at the rate my life is going, I'm going to need to get Bluetooth just so I can have both hands free for kicking ass while I'm checking in with my flock of accomplices on the other line.

"Look, Buffy, what part of don't-call-my-compelled-ass do you not understand?"

"The part where you think I'm so dumb that I can't figure out which ideas come from Silas," Jeremy retorts. "Elena already called last night and asked me where I was."

I grit my teeth and roar around a red SUV without hitting my blinker. "And?"

"And I didn't tell her," he says impatiently.

I really wish I was enough of an optimist to believe that's all Silas compelled us to do.

"Okay, fine," I say tightly. "If you're calling for a Breaking Bad recap, I wasn't watching last night and no, I didn't tape that crackhead crap for you. I've got shit to do around here."

"Yeah, me too," Jeremy says. "Hey, do you know a girl named Nadia?"

"You're going to have to be a lot more specific, kiddo," I tell him, then frown. "Tell me you're not picking up girls when you're supposed to be on the run? Or actually tell me you are, and that Nadia or whoever she is will keep you out of Katherine's grabby little fingers."

"That's just…_no_. Can I just forget you ever said that?"

"Five hundred years of sexual experience can be tempting, and I know the way she operates. Just remember, she'll bite your head off when she's done with you."

"Yeah, well, if looking like my sister and being my super-grand-aunt weren't enough, she's a snot factory right now. I think I can manage to control myself," he says dryly.

I smile slightly. "Glad to hear it. Now, unless you hit Atlantic City along the way, there's no way you need more money already, so what's up?"

"Silas showed up the other night."

I nearly straighten out the next curve in the road. "What, what?"

"Don't worry, he didn't get Katherine. He killed Matt for a minute and stabbed me, but I still had a little of your blood in my system so it's mostly healed by now. Anyway, we fought and I'm stronger than he is, Damon. I think I can take him."

"Did you _win_ the fight?" I ask tightly, and the speedometer slides up to fifty over the limit, the engine purring its approval.

"We were interrupted," Jeremy says defensively.

"By being stabbed?" I suggest acidly.

"By Katherine shooting him."

"With a gun?" I frown. "I guess if any vampire would know how to use one, it'd be her. She's never been much of a fan of the fair fight."

"Listen, if he can stab himself, then his body isn't impenetrable," Jeremy theorizes. "I could probably snap his neck just like a normal vampire. If we cut off his head before he woke up then maybe that would do the trick."

"Or we'd have a talking head on the mantel for a family mascot," I say only half-sarcastically. "Do you think I should have mentioned your enthusiasm for decapitation in the list of topics your fake therapist is treating you for?"

"I have a fake therapist?"

I smack my palm against the steering wheel in irritation. "Ah, hell. Yes, you have a fake therapist. For the purposes of the parent teacher conference I forgot to attend this morning."

"You didn't go?" Jeremy asks. "Why not? Where are you?"

"Picking up my un-dead best friend, hopefully before my brother wakes up from his sloshy little blood coma. I told you, I've got shit to do around here."

"Um, right." Jeremy pauses. "Anyway, I need your help. We need to get Silas somewhere I can ambush him and then you can meet me to help make sure he doesn't have a body left to heal. Maybe we could put him in concrete or something."

"Do you know how hard it is to get the timing right on cement mixing and a quick-healing snapped neck?" I gripe. "Never mind, what does that Nadia person have to do with this whole Addams Family meets Acme Concrete Coffin plan?"

"She might have a way that we could make Matt immune to Silas' mind control, but I wasn't sure if you knew her, or if we could trust her." He clears his throat self-consciously. "I mean, I can take Silas on my own, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to hedge my bets, right?"

I smirk. "Check the ego there, Van Helsing. No, it wouldn't hurt to have backup. And no, you can't trust Nadia."

"So you do know her?"

"Nope. But in case you were too stoned for the last couple years to notice, trusting strangers hasn't gone real well for us."

"She's not really a stranger. Matt knows her from…erm, Europe. She stole his ring."

My brow quirks at Jeremy's odd tone. The quarterback got laid in Europe? By a girl other than the one who bankrolled his trip? Donovan must have gotten smoother with the ladies since the last time I saw him.

"A thief and a slut _and_ mysteriously altruistic?" I roll my eyes so hard I bet he can hear it through the phone. "Next question?"

"Right, fine. But call me later so we can work out the plan."

"Sure, sure," I say offhandedly. I can talk him out of trying to arm-wrestle immortal doppelgangers later.

I almost hang up, but the quality of the silence on the other end makes me pause. Jeremy doesn't say anything, but he doesn't hang up, either.

"Spit it out, Baby Gilbert, you're using up my daytime minutes."

"I thought you said our cell phone plan had unlimited minutes."

"Our plan has unlimited new _phones_," I correct him. "Because I have a temper and you and your sister have the Gilbert luck. Both of which are reasons that I am as short of patience as I am of minutes. So what do you need?"

"Do you remember my uncle, John Gilbert?"

"Judgy, douche-y little face? Surprisingly good genetics? Yeah, I remember. What about him?"

I drum my fingers impatiently against the steering wheel.

"Does Elena ever talk about him?"

I frown and tuck the phone between my shoulder and my ear to downshift for a corner. "Not much. Why?"

"You know, just…he was a jerk, but what he did for her was pretty crazy."

I reach for my sunglasses as the sun peeps over the horizon and wonder if Jeremy's finally ready to come clean. "Does this have anything to do with why Glinda suddenly has a great fondness for text messaging but not enough cell service to make a call?"

This time the silence is absolute. I wonder where he stashed Matt and Katherine for this conversation.

I squint against the sun. "You know, if dating your sister has taught me anything, it's that you can't talk a teenage girl out of every crazy idea that comes into her head."

I hear his sharp intake of breath and figure that's as much confirmation for my guesswork as I need.

"If I went around feeling guilty about every nutty thing I couldn't stop her from doing, I'd have a forehead topography to rival Stefan's."

Jeremy clears his throat. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't." I glare at the road ahead. I am so unqualified for this shit. "All I'm saying is, I'd trade a Barry Bonds for a Mickey Mantle any day of the week without waiting for my change."

I hear his ragged exhale this time and I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

"Stay away from Donovan's sloppy seconds. I've got a better sidekick in mind for you," I tell him, and hang up.

* * *

_**Author's Note:** We've got a crisis situation here, people. This fic lives on reviews and right now, it is starving. It is like an emaciated little Ghandi creature. Or maybe even a Gollum creature. It's in real trouble. Seriously though, I'm pretty worried: are you all reading hoping it will get better or are you liking it or did you just end up here because I put "NAKED IAN SOMERHALDER" in the description and you were tricked into clicking? Would it make it better if I told you there WAS naked Ian later? Or at least naked Damon? _

_In any case, save my fingernails from being harshly and repeatedly bitten and please, please leave a review so I know you all aren't out there cursing my name for posing as a writer. It would truly mean the world to me. _

_Thanks and ire-deflecting cookies to Goldnox, who took 15 years off my life and cardiac well-being with an insanely delectable, 60% naked picture of Ian Somerhalder that ruined my productivity for an entire day. And bonus thanks to her hilarious husband for inventing a fantastic TVD-episode drinking game! Goldnox is truly a beta to be reckoned with, and not just for her (extensive) literary talents. If you'd like to enjoy some of those literary talents for yourself, head on over to her new story __**"Unthinkable"**__ and let her play every emotion you've got like the strings of a well-tuned fiddle. _

_**UP NEXT:** Some lovely, coo-inducing Dalaric and a little Jeremy and grouchy sinus-infection Katherine. Leave no follow button un-pressed, my dears. _


	6. Expiration Date

_Author's Note: First, Holy WOW thank you guys for the huge response to the last chapter! The outpouring of support left me giddy and writing like a crazy person, which has made it a little tough to do things like go to work and sleep, but what is sleep compared to reviews? And to show you how much I love you all, how about a whole lot of Dalaric four days early? With a bow on top?_

* * *

**Chapter 5: Expiration Date**

**DAMON**

I was speeding the whole way here, but when the sign for Whitmore comes into sight, I whip a lap around the block before I can get my hands to steady. It's already getting to where my pulse start climbing at the mere sight of the campus, and this time, it's not just Elena I can't wait to see.

I call them to meet me in the lobby when I get close to the dorm. If I go up, I can't trust myself to leave quickly, and it was risky enough leaving Stefan alone for this long. I should have locked him in the basement cell until I could get back, but not even I'm dick enough to coop him up again after a summer in a safe just so I can sneak a quickie with his ex.

I swing into the handicapped spot right in front of the glass doors and stride into the deserted lobby to find the whole Mystic Falls contingent waiting for me: Elena's pink-streaked hair shining a rich walnut brown even in the harsh fluorescent lighting, Caroline's blonde curls twitching as she shifts her weight impatiently. And towering over both of them, Ric's dark head, still and watchful.

"Still breaking the law, I see," Ric says, a slow grin breaking across his face.

"Perfectly legitimate," I scoff. "I'm well past my senior citizen discount days."

"True enough, old man," Ric agrees, swinging a hand up to grip mine. I jerk him into a hard hug, the knuckles of my fist against his back digging into thick muscle. He feels real.

But then again, he felt real the last time Bonnie blinked him back to life for an evening visit.

I wrinkle my nose as I pull away. "You know, for a dead guy, you smell kinda...hot. Have you been showering with the co-eds?"

"I've been showering with your girlfriend's shampoo," he says, the corner of his mouth kicking up. "And before you go getting all handsy, remember that I know kung-fu."

Elena steps in for a quick kiss, but her lips are too soft under mine not to linger and it isn't until Caroline clears her throat that I remember we have more company.

I open my arms and give her a crooked, close-lipped smile. "Aww, Blondie, you feeling left out?"

Caroline folds her arms, tapping one foot against the floor. "Careful, Salvatore. I might know a little kung-fu myself."

I let my smile spread as I turn away from her, feeling lighter in the chest than I have in months.

"So, please tell me that 'I'll take care of it' doesn't just mean I have to ride in the trunk all the way home," Alaric says dryly.

"Nope." I flick an object up into the air and it flashes brightly before he catches it. "Try that on for size."

Elena leans in and gasps, her eyes flying back to mine. Alaric just stares, locked in a stunned silence.

The ring is a smooth silver with a perfectly round cabochon of lapis lazuli, maybe half the size of the stone in my own. To the left of the gem is an 'A' in simple scrollwork. To the right, an 'S.' The letters are bracketed by drawn crossbows, aimed outward toward approaching danger.

When Alaric looks up, he's shaking his head, amusement gleaming in his eyes. "Only you would design a hunter's ring and then spell it to let a vampire to walk in the daylight."

I shift my weight and smirk. "I have a finely tuned appreciation for irony."

"Wait, how on earth have you had time to get a custom-made daylight ring, especially with Bonnie out of town?" Elena demands.

"I ordered the ring when Ric transitioned."

His eyebrows shoot up and I shrug. "I figured we had plenty of time to get your more genocidal tendencies under control. Obviously I was wrong because by the time it came in, you were dead, but I had Bonnie spell it anyway so I'd have a spare. People are always swiping mine," I complain, glancing at my phone as if to check the time.

The truth is, I'm not entirely sure why I had her spell it, though I have always meant to get an extra. But the ring came in just after Elena transitioned so she was busy starving and dating my brother, and I was busy freaking the ever living fuck out. The whole week was total shit, I was drunk through a good portion of it, and apparently when I showed up at Bonnie's house I looked bad enough that not even Brunhilda could bring herself to give me a hard time about making her spell a ring for a dead vampire who had done his best to drain her dry.

Caroline's looking hard at me, and I avoid her eyes. She was there when Bonnie spelled her daylight ring, so she knows the rings are bound to a particular vampire, but I'm hoping she doesn't remind anybody else of that little fact right now.

Ric clears his throat and stuffs the ring onto his hand. "Thanks, buddy. This is a boatload better than riding in the trunk."

"Well, you've done that too. Though you were a little more dead at the time," I remind him.

"Uh, yeah... Speaking of that." Ric turns to Elena. "Is he gonna road-side litter my internal organs when he finds out I tried to eat you?"

Adrenaline slams through me, lighting up my whole body to the tingling roots of my hair and my eyes shoot to my girlfriend.

Elena takes a quick step to my side and wraps her arms affectionately around my waist. "Of course he isn't. You stopped in time and everything's fine."

Caroline starts playing with the clasp of her bracelet, her eyes bouncing off everything that is not me.

"I take it that PMS Ric came along for the ride this time?" I say neutrally.

"Afraid so," Ric says, cocking his head at the Camaro. "Sure you want me riding shotgun?"

"About that," I say, my urgency at getting Ric away from the girls quite suddenly overriding my fascination with the way Elena's fingers curl around my side and fit perfectly into the cut of muscle at the inside of my hip. "Your ride to the Mr. Hyde Daycare Center is about to turn into a pumpkin."

Elena's face falls as I step back, and she tips her head down, her hair swinging forward as she tries to hide the expression from me. I feel the tug of regret behind my ribs and stiffen my shoulders against it.

"For the road," Caroline says, handing Ric a small collapsible cooler that I'm guessing contains his liquid lunch.

Elena's eyes narrow as she looks between me and Ric, and I don't know what tips her off, but she's suddenly on to me. "Wait, you're going after Silas, aren't you? No way, Damon, are you out of your mind?"

I give her a quick, tight smile. "Aaand that's the stroke of midnight." I push through the lobby doors and head for the car, Ric right behind me. Elena catches my hand so fast that I'm pretty sure she just blew the top off the in-public vampire speed limit.

"Uh-uh." She's already shaking her head. "Promise me, Damon, _promise_ me that you won't go after him. He could compel you two to kill _each other," _she says, her voice dangerously close to breaking.

Don't look her in the eye, don't look her in the eye, don't– Fuck.

They're shimmering with tears and all I can see is Elena on her knees in the middle of her living room, gasoline gleaming on the hardwood.

I sling a casual arm around her shoulders and curl her into my chest, avoiding Ric's eyes as I growl down into her hair, "You know, you're putting a real kink in my plans for world domination."

She relaxes, letting her forehead find its place against my collarbone. I press a fierce kiss against her hair and don't let myself think about all the moments lining up between now and when I'll be able to do this again. Already, there are too many.

I dip my head to her ear and breathe, "Trust me."

And then I point my disobedient ass toward the car before I take her upstairs and she makes me forget all about what a shitty brother I am.

I wait in the driver's seat while Elena hugs Alaric one more time, mildly annoyed that she thinks I'd toss him at Silas like cannon fodder. Besides, judging from the snippet of story I got already, he probably gave killing Silas his best shot and got witchy wuwu'ed into thinking Stefan Senior was the president of PETA before he could finish the job.

The girls wave as Ric shuts the car door behind him and I lift two fingers off the steering wheel in farewell, letting my eyes stroke Elena's one more time before I'm back on the fantasies and phone calls diet.

"How's Stefan?" Ric asks quietly.

"Not terrible," I admit, shifting into reverse. "He had a little low blood sugar when he first busted out, and then I left him alone to drop Elena back off at college, figuring he was full. When I got back he was splashing around knee-deep in the basement blood fridge like it was a kiddie pool, but it's nothing a little Sham-Wow won't fix." I shrug. "Took him out last night and we kept the bars open late, but not the mortuary."

There's a whisper of pride in my chest at the memory, but I'm not into counting chickens before I'm ready to eat the little fuckers, so I try not to let it go to my head.

"That doesn't sound too bad," Ric says, sounding as surprised as I feel.

"Not for Stefan, no. He's all about the human blood this time, but he's not being as whiny as usual about my backseat driving."

"Is he...stopping?" Ric asks skeptically.

"No," I admit. "But he's letting me pull him away."

Ric grunts, unimpressed, and pops the lever to move his seat back the extra few inches that make up the difference between his height and my brother's. I glance at the side mirror but Whitmore is already fading into the distance.

This summer, that seat never budged. Third click back for Elena's leggy 5'6" with Jeremy constantly getting his hand slapped for reaching up to change the music from the backseat.

Ric flicks on the stereo, moving the station back to the guitar-heavy classic rock he likes. I let it slide.

"I suppose you've already got a plan for how to explain why I'm back from the dead?" Ric says only half-hopefully.

"Don't have to." I pull out onto the highway and the Camaro growls with relief as I open it up. "When you went off the reservation, I told the school you disappeared and forgot to put a note in the bottles you left behind. After you died, I promised Elena I'd take care of the will stuff and..." My mouth twists sardonically. "I didn't. No memorial service, no death certificate, not even a missing person's report to clear up."

"What about my tombstone?" he asks dryly. "That's a bit of a tell, wouldn't you think?"

"Compelled the guy who made it and the gravediggers, too. They don't remember a thing."

"Cheapskate."

"Hey, I paid for it," I protest. "I just don't believe in leaving a trail unless I have to. I can go to the cemetery tonight and rip up that tombstone. It'll make a nice weight for the trash can lid to keep the 'coons out. Or," I punch him playfully in the shoulder as the thought occurs to me, "I guess you could go get it yourself, since you're playing with the big boys now."

Alaric smiles ruefully, tipping his head to the side to study me. "Somehow I didn't think you'd be so pleased to have a new vampire on your hands when you were already trying to deal with Stefan."

"What?" I scoff. "But you're known for your temperance."

"Hey," he complains. "Keep the kettle talk to a minimum over there."

"You've got to admit," I tell him, so cheerful that I even use my blinker when I swoop around a minivan with a 'Coexist' sticker. It has a peace sign for the 'o' but the kids wrestling in the backseat don't seem to have gotten the memo. "It'll be nice to have a liver with a lifetime warranty."

His silence feels squirmy, but I wait until I'm squarely back in my lane to look over at him. He's avoiding my eyes but I know the look he's hiding all too well. It was there when he first came to town, so sick over Isobel that he had one foot already resigned to the grave. It's the look he had before I gave him something to fight.

"What," I say flatly. I fucking knew this day couldn't be bad-news free. I was just hoping to make it all the way to 7 A.M. before a new batch of shit hit the fan.

"I'm not exactly immortal, Damon. I'm not even sure I'm actually alive."

"We talking only-go-for-headshots here?" I ask sharply.

"Look, last time Esther was able to give me the powers of an Original by tying me to a human life for balance. But this time, she said that she and Qetsiyah could pull me back to the Other Side with a reversal of the same spell that brought me here."

"When?" I demand. "When you're done playing Whack-a-Mole with the most powerful immortals on earth or when they realize you already lit the fucking mallet on fire and walked out of the arcade?"

I can feel him looking at me and I pull into the other lane and gas it around two trucks and a Mini Cooper just so I don't have to look back.

"When?" I snap.

"I don't know," Ric says quietly. "It could be any time."

X X X

**JEREMY**

I sit in the woods for a long time after Damon hangs up. I should have asked what he meant by his undead best friend. Does he have some vampire buddy in town? He always talks so fast and snappy that I end up feeling like an idiot if I ask too many questions. But I kind of wish I would have explained more about Nadia. I mean, can we really afford to turn down help against something older than an Original?

I probably shouldn't leave her alone with Matt for long, even if he is armed. As I stand up, my stomach is uneasy like it used to get when I'd watch Vickie talking to Tyler. And just like back then, I'm not entirely sure what I want to do about it.

I head toward the glow of the fire, but they don't see me until I'm right behind them, their eyes adjusted to the bright light instead of the darkness. I realize with a jolt that I did the same thing the entire time I was on watch. How stupid am I? A hunter that doesn't know how to stand watch? Jesus. In fact, I shouldn't have a fire at all. If you're a bad guy looking for people in the woods, where are they going to be? By a fire. Duh.

I shake my head, annoyed. I need to be better than this, to think like a villain. Like a hunter of the Five. But what I really need is a teacher, because I'm doing a crap job of figuring it out on my own.

Connor made it look easy, as if he absorbed badass right along with his ink. But then, he was in the Special Forces, so he had outside training. And honestly, the guy was kind of a dick even before he tried to kill all my friends. Damon knows loads about fighting and stuff, but he was even more of a dick than Connor when we were practicing at the lake house. He was always checking his phone for messages from Elena, getting pissy afterward if there wasn't one, and pushing me even harder if there was.

Nadia's the first to look up when I approach. She's perched up on a log like it's a director's chair in a movie studio. Matt didn't say much about how they met, but the way he was clearing his throat, his eyes jumping all over the place, made me think maybe they hooked up. She looks hot in a thin, trendy-looking black top, but something about her weirds me out. I'm not sure I would have been into her, even if I hadn't met her in the forest in the middle of the night when I was on the run from an ancient psycho.

The honk of a blowing nose tells me that I wasn't lucky enough for Katherine to sleep through this. Matt's sitting between her and Nadia, the rifle still across his lap and an awkwardly pained look on his face that tells me the conversation hasn't been great.

Katherine's curled up against the trunk of a tree, my dad's old sleeping bag draped across her lap and dragging in the dirt. Her shoulders are curled forward in the most un-Katheriney way I've ever seen, huddled around the pile of crumpled tissues in her lap. She gives me a look out of red-rimmed eyes that looks equal parts miserable and accusing. Jeez, she's such a baby. I thought vampires were supposed to be tough.

"Did you take the Nyquil?" I ask, holding back a sigh.

"Yeth," she says sourly, the sharp flash of her eyes more pitiful than intimidating when paired with the raw rosiness of her nose. "It'th not working."

"It only lasts for about six hours," Matt says. He's been a lot more patient with her since she shot Silas. He stands, tipping the rifle casually back to rest against his shoulder. "You want me to grab you some more?"

"Not until you clean out the Eurotrash," she says snidely.

Nadia makes a dismissive sound in the back of her throat and half-rolls her eyes. "Well?" she prompts me.

The fire's too hot on my face, the chill of the forest still pressing in at my back. I shift uncomfortably under her gaze.

I don't know what to tell her. She knows how to find us. If I refuse her she could sell us out to Silas. But if she does then I won't have to set a trap for him. If I can be ready when he comes, maybe I can take him even without Matt's help. But if I screw it up, I don't have a ring to save me this time and nobody will be safer if I get killed. And if I make a deal with her and she screws us over Damon's never going to let me hear the end of it and he's already pissed about that fight in school...

"Yes," I tell her, then panic. "I mean, no. You've barely told us anything." I draw myself up a little taller. More information can't be bad, right? "How can I trust you if I don't know what your problem with Silas is? You haven't even said why you want to help us in the first place?"

A very subtle thinning of her lips is her only reaction. "With his increasing mental abilities, Silas is a danger to everyone. The Travelers have been hunting him even longer than your people have. Because once," she says, re-crossing her legs uncomfortably, "he was one of our own. We are responsible for what he does, for his depravities against humans and the supernatural alike."

"What do you mean my people?" I ask, talking over Matt even as he asks, "What are Travelers?"

We share a look and it's almost funny for a second, how much shit we don't know.

"Gypthieth," Katherine says disgustedly. "They're dirty, th-tealing Gypthieth. Travelerth," she snorts, the sound wet and stuffy instead of disdainful.

Nadia's skin tightens over her prominent cheekbones, but she ignores Katherine. "I know you are one of the Five." She inclines her head at me. "It is your sacred duty to hunt Silas."

I stiffen, but I make myself look her in the eye. I'm not ashamed to be a hunter, and screw Nadia if she thinks she can mess with me by calling me out.

Katherine blows her nose loudly. "They can get inside your head," she says, her voice a little clearer now but still all pouty-sounding. "They can sit inside your mind, pilot your body if they want. Gypsies," she says with a vicious glance at Nadia, "have been thieves long before they were pickpockets." Her nose clogs again, her face disappearing behind yet another tissue and I look away, grossed out. It's like she's spent the past five hundred years storing up mucus for this head cold.

"Is that what you did to me?" Matt demands. "Silas said there was somebody else in my head–did you steal my body?"

"No," Nadia says, and looks annoyed. "My friend, Gregor, was observing from your body but he is dead. He was killed while you were also dead and his soul had nowhere to go, so his was the true death. He is on the Other Side now, where our people have been sentenced to Purgatory ever since Silas and Qetsiyah's lover's spat doomed all our people."

"Don't be tho dramatic," Katherine sneers and digs for more tissue.

I kick dirt into the fire to buy me some time to think. There's way more going on with this Nadia chick than she's telling us. Like why they needed to spy on Silas if they already know so much about him. I figure it had to be Silas who killed Nadia's friend but Silas was here for most of the time Matt was dead, so he wouldn't have had time to find Gregor's real body.

Katherine sits up and straightens the sleeping bag, pushing her tangled hair out of her face. I don't know why she doesn't just put her hair up, like Elena always does when she's sick.

"Look," Katherine says flatly. "Silas didn't have time to kill your friend between digging the bullet out of his chest and fighting Jeremy. So odds are, you killed Gregor. Which means you either already cut a deal with Silas, or you and your friend weren't really on the same side to begin with. So why don't you–" she breaks off into a coughing fit, smashing a crumpled tissue over her mouth and spitting something loudly into it. I wince and shove my hands into my pockets.

"Cut the crap," Katherine says weakly, and one last cough pops out, "and tell us the truth. You want us to do your dirty work, fine. Spill. And not any of this good-Gypsy saves the world crap, either."

"I don't want _you _to do anything," Nadia says coolly. "I'd be happy to call Silas right now and tell him where to pick you up."

"Same to you, bitch," Katherine says, and waggles her cell phone tauntingly. "Betcha he doesn't like Gypsies any more than I do."

"Hey," Matt says firmly. "We could all be on the same side here. Just tell us what's really going on, Nadia. We can help you, but enough with all the lies and mysterious crap."

She smoothes her pants and tilts her head a little, stiffly. "Fine. I killed Gregor. He and I never got along, and I needed to win Silas' trust. Silas can see your thoughts, but only what you are thinking at the moment. I told him I would use my abilities to help him find Katherine, and that I did not agree with Gregor, and he believed me because it was true."

Katherine reaches as if for another tissue, but half-way there, her hand slides under the sleeping bag. I wonder what weapon she's got hidden in there, and I move closer, ready to stop her if I need to. I want to hear the rest of what Nadia has to say. Because she didn't exactly_ have_ to stop and chat before she texted Silas our location. It doesn't mean we can trust her but it definitely means she's not totally on his side.

"Silas has been out many times," Nadia says. "And every time the Travelers return him to his tomb before he can find a way to drop the veil, to wreak his vengeance on Qetsiyah. I need his help, but I cannot allow him to roam freely." She smiles a little, but it is cold. "It's simple. Once he has done my favor for me, I will tell him where Katherine is. When he comes to claim her, I will enter Matt's mind so that he cannot be controlled and the two of you together will subdue Silas so that we may return his body to the cave."

I shake my head. No way. Her story is so full of holes I don't know how she expects me to fall for it. "Why wouldn't Silas just compel you to find him Katherine? And what favor can you possibly trust him to do for you?"

Katherine sniffles and tugs the sleeping bag up higher around herself, but her eyes are keen on Nadia's face.

"Silas was a very powerful Traveler," she explains. "When he became immortal, he lost many of his powers, but he is still a Traveler. We are too alike for his mind control to work on us, but he can still read our thoughts and project external illusions that appear to be real. As for the favor, that is my private affair, not yours." She tips her head, calm though her eyes are beginning to narrow. "Will you help me or do I need to find someone else?"

Katherine strokes her phone with one finger. "I'm thure he would find this all very interesting."

I have to bite the inside of my lip to keep from laughing this time. With her stuffy nose, her evil villainess act is a little too Dr. Evil to be convincing.

Nadia gives her a nasty look. "_If_ you were stupid enough to call him." She lifts her chin. "I will tell you, though it makes no difference to any of you. I want him to appear as Gregor. My people have been arguing for a long time, and they are finally ready. To buy land, to find a place for us where we can be safe from persecution, where we can defend ourselves from those who would hunt us."

I cut a glance toward Matt. She wants to work with a bitter old immortal to get herself a Gypsy Israel, and she doesn't think that might backfire? But her eyes are alight with intensity, and even if it is a stupid plan, she seems to be really set on it.

"Gregor was very powerful and without his vote, we would have never had a home." For the first time, her voice loses its bored lilt and she leans forward slightly, her hands tightening. "This is my only chance, or I risk my entire lifetime being lost to arguments and indecisive votes. My people will never be safe if we keep moving, if we never know from which direction the next threat will come."

Matt sneaks a look at me and I know he believes her too. It's pretty cold, killing her friend for votes or whatever. If she's so tired of moving around, she should get a place, not bribe an immortal freak to fool her whole family into buying a compound with her. Still, I don't think she'd make something like that up and she's my best shot at getting backup against Silas. And she can obviously find us no matter where we go, so the best thing to do is stop running and fight, no matter what Damon says.

"Okay, we'll do it, but not with Matt," I tell her. "He's human and even with the ring, he's not as strong as Silas. Let me get Damon here and you can shield his mind instead."

Damon's going to murder the shit out of me for volunteering him to the body snatcher. But I know he won't want to be left out of this fight and we can't risk Silas getting control of him.

Nadia's already shaking her head. "I cannot enter the mind of a supernatural creature. Only a human. I took Matt's ring to help my people, to protect a human we could use to attack Silas, but then it happened that Silas went to the same town as Matt." She tilts her head, an enigmatic smile on her face. "The fates have their plans, the same as we do. I only hope that this time, our plans are the same."

The knot in my stomach twists at her words and I wish Bonnie would come back, to tell me if I'm doing the right thing or not. It's stupid to be afraid of death, when I already know exactly what it's like. But I can't seem to help it.

"I doubt it," Katherine says, tilting her head back against the log behind her and wearily closing her swollen eyes. "Fate is a catty little double-crossing cunt, just like you."

X X X

**DAMON**

"And when exactly were you going to tell me that you're just borrowed from the Dead Witches Savings and Loan?" I ask acidly.

"When Elena wasn't listening," Ric says, staring straight out the windshield with a set to his jaw that I know is guilt but looks like something a lot more pugilistic.

I nearly miss the clutch when I stomp my foot down to change gears. I ram it into fourth, my tendons twanging with the effort it takes not to break the shifter off.

When I have a free hand again, I fish my phone out of my pocket and thrust it at Ric.

"Call her," I say through my teeth. "Right fucking now."

"Damon, after everything with Jenna and then me and Jeremy and Bonnie...I just can't do that to her."

"It's obviously happening, whether you like it or not, and she has a right to know," I tell him. "Call her or I'll do it myself."

The girl brought him muffins when he was losing his mind for fuck's sake. Chocolate muffins that smelled like a warm brick oven in the middle of a loft full of sawdust and on-coming death. And it's my shoulder that's going to catch her tears when he leaves her again.

My fist clenches dangerously on the steering wheel at the thought.

He presses the number 1 and holds, his face lightening when he sees that he's right about who tops my speed-dial list. "Told you that'd get you the girl," he smirks.

"With looks like these, who needs a cure for immortality?" I joke half-heartedly, but all I can think is that I need Ric to stop looking at me for a minute so I can scrape it together.

Ric glances away as Elena answers, and I do my best to tune out their conversation. I didn't want to hear this news the first time, and I need to stop being whiny about it and make some progress on one of the many ways my life is blowing up in my face.

Unfortunately, I'm a little short on evil master plans at the moment. Not the best state of affairs to be in if I don't want Jeremy getting impatient and going rogue on me.

He's actually not bad in a fight, especially with his Hunter Expansion pack, and for once we're facing a city-soft enemy with 2000 years of sedentary living under his belt. But I think Elena would be reluctant to risk Jeremy on an especially rough game of Wii Golf these days. And with the memory of his broken body against the asphalt still fresh, I'm not much interested in the long odds games either.

Yeah, the Karate Kid's not quite ready for his swelling-trumpets scene yet.

The bus boy would be an acceptable, expendable back-up plan if they really could weather-proof his head. He's even a half-decent shot. What I really want is Jeremy's Silas-proof brain in Alaric's Original-fast body, but we're short on trustworthy, talented witches around here for the kind of wardrobe change Klaus used to prefer.

Alaric's voice goes low and gentle and I wince, trying harder to distract myself because I'd rather take a hammer to my own toes than hear either side of this conversation.

Speaking of distractions, that's pretty much all I'd need to take care of Silas. A lapse long enough to stop him from mind-fuzzing me while I popped his neck. Immortal or not, if I could do that, I'd have all the time in the world to keep re-arranging his spinal column and getting creative with the dismemberment.

Alaric disconnects and drops his head back against his seat with a groan.

"Well, that was fun."

"Just wait until you see our afternoon," I tell him with an artificial smile. "Wanna flip a coin for who plays vampire strait jacket vs haggling with car salesmen?" I glance at him. "On second thought, you get car salesmen. We can play vamp preschool another day."

"You think I came back from the dead to run your errands for you?" he asks incredulously.

"I'm sorry, do you have some pressing harp-playing to get back to?"

"Dick," he says without heat, flipping down the sun visor.

"Zombie," I counter, and he snorts out a laugh.

"Just try not to get raptured back to Purgatory on the way home and wreck the new car," I say sardonically, my gaze flicking from the side mirror to the rearview and back again.

The corner of his mouth kicks up as he settles a little deeper into the seat, his eyes trained on the road. "Missed you too, buddy."

* * *

_Author's Note: All the love in the world for my incredible beta, Goldnox, who betas in three second intervals for hours at a time in between working, and betas when she's three gallons of Sunny D into a wretched cold, and betas when she could be snuggling into the couch on her well-earned day off…yeah, I'd give her a sainthood if she wasn't dragging my soul through the wringer with her incredible fic, "Unthinkable," but hey, I hear those horns hold up the halo just fine. ;)_

_Special thanks this week to Nightlightbright, whose golden, glowing Muse Baby (complete with acne-curing tresses) dispatched her karma canary to weave me a coat from the feathers of less fairy-tale-is birds so I could write in the bitter cold of my golf cart without freezing off any appendages. And who also dispatched her terrifyingly powerful ninja sensei powers in many many different directions on my behalf this week. _

_Do yourself a favor and go check out her meltingly delightful Delena fic, "River Deep Ocean Wide." _

_Thank you all so much for your incredible support and for every single heartfelt review. Can't wait to see what you have to say this week!_


	7. Whispers In The Dark

**Chapter 6: Whispers In The Dark **

**ELENA**

When I open the door to our dorm room, Caroline's lying on her stomach on her bed, her feet waving idly in the air as she flips through the pages of an Intro to Biology textbook.

"Hey, you." She looks up and smiles, searching my face to gauge my mood.

I'm so _sick _of people doing that. This summer they finally started to get over it, like they weren't always thinking, "What's wrong with Elena?" but now it is happening all over again.

Worse, I _feel _like everything is starting to go wrong for me again. My mind keeps playing the image of Damon's red taillights disappearing around the corner this morning. I'm getting way too familiar with that sight but it makes my stomach drop every time, like something really bad is about to happen.

And today, it did.

"Come on," I tell Caroline, and force a smile onto my face. "Time to blend, hopefully well enough to fool even the local anti-vampire council."

"Professor Maxfield?" she guesses, and I nod. She rolls off the bed and reaches for her shoes.

I wait restlessly for her to get ready, trying to shake off the weight that's settled in my stomach since Ric's phone call. He was dead yesterday. There's no reason to feel like I just lost him all over again.

Caroline leads the way out the door, glancing sympathetically back at me. "You know, you didn't have to send Ric back so soon. I know how much you've missed him."

"Damon needs him more than I do right now," I tell her. "Especially if it might not be long–" my voice wobbles and I stop. Caroline was there when he called and her not-so-subtle sideways peek at me tells me that she knows exactly what I'm thinking. "Damon needs him," I finish quietly.

Our footsteps echo on the industrial tile of the empty stairwell.

"Besides, we couldn't just keep him in the dorm room," I point out.

"It's a co-ed dorm!" Caroline protests.

I roll my eyes. "I'm not really sure keeping an older man in our dorm room counts as blending in, Caroline."

"Okay," she relents. "But if he goes all vamp hater and tries to kill Stefan, you're going to be facing the full force of the Forbes wrath."

"He said he can control his personality switches now," I remind her.

"Yeah, but Stefan's not exactly at his best currently," Caroline says, and then glances away, pressing her lips together. "I can't believe Damon said I couldn't come."

"He didn't say you couldn't help," I correct. "He said not _yet_. He has a whole plan, Caroline."

"Yeah, I've seen the results of his so-called 'plans,'" she says, air quoting disdainfully.

"You know, you don't have to like it, Caroline, but even you can't claim that anybody knows Stefan better than Damon does," I tell her sharply. "You need to trust him."

"Okay, okay!" she says, holding up her hands. "Fine, whatever. But are you sure you want me to go with you to meet that grumpy science teacher? He hated me, and your dad is the one he got all excited about."

"He said that strict stuff was just an act, for the rest of the students. But I'm not sure I want to go alone," I tell her. "I've got Professor Shane deja vu."

"They were both suspiciously young and cute for professors," Caroline agrees, casting a longing look toward the Starbucks across the street from our dorm before she follows me deeper into the campus.

"And the way I met them is practically identical," I remind her. "Auditing a class I'm not supposed to be in at Whitmore...Damon and I even got yelled at for talking last time, too."

"So..." Caroline says, peeking up at me through her eyelashes. "What you're telling me is that you think Professor Maxfield might want to take us on a boat to a remote island so he can see his dead wife in a cave and maybe dig up an ancient psychic vampire?"

"More like I'm hoping he's head of the council here and can unwittingly help us hide in plain sight," I tell her, and pull open the door to the Natural Sciences building.

"Second time's the charm?" Caroline proposes cheerfully.

"Third time if you count Ric," I remind her.

"Ric's not creepy!" Caroline protests. "Well, except for that thing with the pencils, but that wasn't really his fault."

"Right, but he was definitely a little more…knowledgeable than we'd hoped," I point out, raising my eyebrows pointedly.

"True," Caroline says, her optimism deflating slightly. She points out the plastic plaque designating Professor Maxfield's office and I knock lightly on the closed door.

He answers right away, and his professional neutrality gives way to a wide smile when he sees me.

"Elena, I take it your plate cleared off?" his eyes twinkle, taking the sting out of his words before he glances at Caroline curiously.

"It did," I confirm self-consciously. "Professor Maxfield, this is my roommate, Caroline, from Mystic Falls."

"Call me Wes," he says with a nod, but he's not quite as effusive as he was a moment ago. Still, he steps back and we follow him into the office.

It's an oddly shaped room, turning the corner of the building so it is L-shaped instead of square. The desk is shoved into the nearest corner with stacks of textbooks on the floor all around it, papers obscuring most of its surface, and no bookshelves in sight. A polished walnut bust of a clown rests on the windowsill with partially closed venetian blinds falling at an angle off the top of its head.

I take a step forward to peek around the corner into a nook with bright fluorescent lights and a sterile-looking steel lab table. An assortment of microscopes and Bunsen burners are arranged neatly upon it with not a hint of clutter in sight. This office is like the architectural equivalent of bi-polar disorder and it makes me immediately uneasy.

Caroline must be thinking the same thing because she tilts her head with a quizzical smile and asks, "Isn't there a lab just down the hall?"

Wes smiles. "Sure. But I have a lot of my own little projects, and I prefer the privacy." He turns to me. "This was your father's office, actually, for a while when he was a teaching assistant. It was quite an honor for a TA to be given such a large workspace. He equipped the lab space at his own expense, of course."

I try to keep my reaction off my face, but I can't picture my dad in here at all. He was a family doctor, not a researcher, and he never smelled like it does in here, all dust and chemicals and glossy textbook paper.

I wander closer to the desk, which isn't as industrial as the rest of the room, with its richly carved corners, the legs shaped like the claw feet of an antique bathtub. Yellowing cartoons are taped to the front. The Far Side and...Cathy?

I'm not sure what to think of this guy, so I try the direct approach. "You said you wanted to talk about my dad, about what he did when he was here."

Wes leans against the corner of his desk, glancing at Caroline again.

"This is Caroline _Forbes," _I emphasize. "Her mother and my parents worked very closely together in Mystic Falls."

"Liz?" his face lights up. "I've heard of her, but we've never met. That makes much more sense now."

"Sense?" I say carefully.

"How much do you know about your father's research?"

This is where it gets tricky. I already accused him of faking death certificates, but that doesn't necessarily mean he knows everything. I hold my hands still so that I won't start to fidget.

"I know that a lot of people would call his research...abnormal. But our family is, um, used to that kind of thing."

His eyes crinkle at the corners as he grins. "Yeah. Vampires do tend to raise some red flags in the academic community."

I blow out a sigh and start to laugh. "Oh thank goodness."

"_Really_ glad you actually knew what we were talking about," Caroline says with a relieved smile, playing her part perfectly. "It's not a great ice breaker, you know. Hey there are vampires, surprise!" she throws her hands up in mock excitement.

Wes' smile fades and his brow furrows. "Wait, you don't think vampires are _real_, do you?"

"I, uh–" I stutter.

"Elena's father was really into mythology," Caroline improvises quickly, her voice a full octave higher than normal. "You know, supernatural creatures, fairy tales, that kind of stuff. But um, you were probably more into his biology research you know, cells and erm...the Krebs cycle and the uh, hypotheses and um...stuff," she trails off, apparently having exhausted her vocabulary of random scientific terms.

Wes' face is entirely unreadable, and then his mouth twitches and he starts to laugh. "Gotcha!" When we just stare, his laugh explodes into full guffaws and he clutches his stomach, gasping for breath.

I chuckle weakly and Caroline manages a tight smile. Very tight.

"I'm sorry," he apologizes, wiping his eyes. "I don't get the opportunity to do that very often, and I suppose I should resist the urge but it's really just too much fun to pass up."

He goes around his desk and opens a drawer.

"Look, I'll make it up to you. Here's your father's research, summarizing everything he was working on all the way through med school. All the data sheets aren't here but if you want them, I could go through the archives and–"

"No, this is enough for now," I assure him, eyeing the stack of rubber-banded folders he's laying out on the desk. "I just don't understand. I know about my father's work with the council and he ah, trained me to follow in his footsteps as a hunter," I improvise, figuring it is only partially a lie. Alaric was as much of a father as I've had since my own dad died, and he _did_ train me to be a hunter. "But when I was growing up, Dad was a family practitioner, not a lab researcher."

"Our council here," Wes says, dropping into his office chair. "Is based on your Mystic Falls council. We have people that take care of the paperwork end of things, we have some like myself who are interested in gathering knowledge about supernatural creatures and we have those that deal with the creatures themselves. Your father was rare in that he was an incredibly talented, intuitive researcher but he was also good at finding and killing vampires." Wes clears his throat. "_Quite_ good."

"So you signed Megan's death certificate," Caroline says tentatively, toying with the rubber bands on the file folders, "which I guess means that you deal with paperwork, but did your friends tell you what exactly happened to her?"

"Vampire attack," Wes says flatly. "The vampire in question has already been found and dealt with."

For the first time, his blue eyes show no trace of humor, and the line of his jaw looks harder without a smile to distract from its square lines.

"As I said. We have people who deal with that sort of thing. And Megan was one of their daughters. We had high hopes for her, and we placed her in a dorm room with you because you were both legacy students, children of old Whitmore council members. We did not anticipate such a vicious attack in her first week here, away from the protection of her parents."

"I'm sorry," I murmur, and his eyes flash once before he turns away.

"In our line of work, I'm afraid, it happens."

Caroline's eyes widen fractionally and she trades a glance with me. It's a little freaky that they have professional vampire hunters, but at least it explains why my father knew Megan when she was younger.

I clear my throat and change the subject. "So, if my father was such an amazing researcher, why did he give it up?"

"Well, I suppose it was because he hit a dead end." Wes shrugs, pushing the folders toward me. "He had a hypothesis and unlike most researchers, he was able to definitively disprove it. But," he says, his eyes glinting excitedly, "I looked over his records and there is one thing he didn't consider, one possibility that I wonder if we could pursue."

"Wait, back up a minute. What was the hypothesis?" I ask.

Caroline shoots me an annoyed look and I ignore her. Sophomore year, when we actually had time to attend class, we had Life Sciences together. Of course, Caroline was seated next to Sean Thompson and so she spent the entire semester flirting like crazy and writing notes to him in class. She passed by the skin of her teeth that year and so I'm not surprised even simple terms like hypothesis seem to have gotten lost in the daze of Sean's blue green eyes and junior varsity football shoulders.

"He thought we could adapt properties of vampire blood to cure diseases in humans, particularly cancer," Wes says simply, as if he didn't just say that my father was trying to cure cancer and I didn't even _know. _

"The problem was that he couldn't isolate the parts that conferred vampirism from the parts that healed. It was too dangerous to market straight vampire blood and risk people dying from other causes after their treatments, creating vampires with no one to guide them. So he did the responsible thing and dropped the research."

"So what did you find when you looked into it again?" Caroline says, eyeing the folders with renewed interest as if they might contain concert tickets to The Fray or something.

"I'll show you," he says eagerly, and pulls the rubber band off the top file, flipping quickly through sketches on graph paper, stacks of scientific articles, and images of cells and other blobby things I don't recognize. "It's really interesting, actually, because the change doesn't happen in the blood cell at all. Vampire blood introduces a chemical agent that spreads throughout the body…" he trails off absently, holding up one picture to get a better look at it, then discarding it.

"And it breaks the phosphate backbone of the mitochondrial DNA in the eukaryotic cells, allowing mutations to occur." He glances up at me and registers my confusion.

"A eukaryotic cell–" he takes a breath, and then pauses and shakes his head. "You know what, let's skip that for now. The important part is that they contain mitochondria, which are important for metabolizing energy, and also are heavily involved in the process of aging. Or," he pauses significantly, "not aging. Vampire blood makes temporary changes to the mitochondrial DNA and telomeric DNA."

I bite my lip, trying to connect what he's saying to what I know about the way vampires transition.

"Dying cements those changes before they can be reversed as a natural process of cell regeneration. And then when you introduce human blood at the right time, the entire metabolic process of the eukaryotic cells is transformed to derive its nutrition from blood instead of food!" he gestures excitedly and then hesitates, deflating a little when he catches Caroline's eyes wandering toward the window and his clown carving.

"So vampire blood changes human cells so they heal quickly and don't age," I summarize, trying to show him that I'm paying attention. "And the changes are made permanent by death and drinking human blood. But we already knew that," I remind him, trying to keep my impatience out of my voice.

"What your father found is that there's a very specific mutation in the mitochondrial DNA that is _clearly _a second generation mutation."

He fans out several papers he's selected, some with lists of letters, a couple of photographs, and a complicated table. He thumps his finger on the table and I nod, but I have not even a single clue what that means.

"Somewhere along the line, vampires changed from something that had accelerated healing and vampirism as _separate_ but linked traits. That original abnormality would allow us to isolate the healing properties without passing on vampirism."

"So what?" Caroline says. "Vampires have been around for what, like two thousand years?" she says offhandedly, as if it is a guess. "So if something changed, it probably changed a long time ago."

"I agree, actually," Wes says, looking at Caroline with new respect. "But we're talking about immortal creatures here, and I think there's at least a chance that whatever used to have this cell structure might still be walking around out there. Something like vampires, but much...older."

X X X

**ELENA**

"_I don't want anybody else…"_

The Divinyls song blasts into the silent darkness of my dorm room.

"_When I think about you I touch myself…"_

My phone is in my hand, my thumb on the "Accept" button before I'm even fully awake.

"Seriously, Elena?" Caroline groans from the other bed. "It's three in the morning. _Three."_

"Sorry, sorry, sorry," I chant, throwing off the covers and hurrying for the hall.

The floor is cold under my curling toes but I don't know where my slippers are. I open the door and pause, glancing down to be sure I'm decent. I'm in a thin tank top and tiny sleep shorts, a little racy for hallway roaming considering this dorm is like Grand Central Station at any given hour of the day.

Still, I don't want to disturb Caroline more than I already have, and my robe is on the back of my closet door all the way across the room.

I close the door behind me, hugging my arms across my chest as best I can while still holding my phone.

"Hello?" I whisper.

"Eleeeena!" Damon says happily.

I shake my head, a smile tugging at my lips. "Hi, sweetie."

"Hi," he says smugly.

Caroline peeks out into the hall, her taupe satin sleep mask pushed up on her forehead. She tosses me my robe, rolls her eyes, and closes the door again.

"Thank you!" I whisper-shout back at her, juggling the phone while I cover up. My robe is a jewel-red silk kimono that Damon bought me, and I shrug it on gratefully, shivering in the chill air of the hallway. Somebody must have left the window to the fire escape open after they snuck out to smoke.

"You changed my ringtone again," I accuse without heat.

"Mm-hmm," he agrees unrepentantly.

"Where are you?" I ask, using my hip to bump the door out of my way and scooting inside the lounge.

"On the ground," he reports cheerfully.

There are two guys sitting on the couch playing the same game on separate phones. From the toneless groaning, it sounds like a zombie killing game. Next to them is a girl with orangey-red hair lying on her back, her legs twined across both of their laps. She's holding an economics textbook up over her head and highlighting in it with a pink marker. I can see where she's colored a chunk of her hair with the marker, too.

I duck back out the door and tip-toe toward the stairwell.

"_Where_ on the ground?"

There's a fuzzy sound as if the phone is scuffing against his face. "Grass ground," Damon says decisively. "Wanna come lay on the grass ground with me?"

My heart kicks up. "Are you at Whitmore?"

He grunts and there's more rustling on the other side of the phone like he's sitting up. "Nope," he reports, sounding disappointed. "Boarding house. Pick me up?"

"Damon, I have to be to class in three hours."

"Drive _fast," _he suggests.

I laugh, skipping down the stairs.

"And I don't have a car."

He sighs and his breath jags with impact like he just fell back onto the ground. "Elena, why are you so mean to me?"

I smile tenderly and spin myself into the second floor lounge, which is blessedly empty. "Total lack of empathy. My therapist says I'm hopeless."

"Say something nice," he pouts.

I take a deep breath and quote, "'Being loved deeply gives you strength, loving deeply gives you courage.'"

"About _me, _Elena," he sighs patiently.

"I was showing off," I giggle, dropping onto the navy blue couch and wincing at the rock-hard industrial-upholstered cushions. "I just learned that today. You're supposed to be impressed."

"Lao Tzu?"

"I thought you were drunk," I accuse, faking a gasp. "Mr. I've-_been-_on-a-college-campus."

"Sweetheart, the last thing you need to read is philosophy," Damon says, his voice gentling to a soft pitch that he hardly ever allows himself when he's sober.

I tuck my legs up onto the couch with me, unable to help the pleased little half-sigh that escapes me at his use of the endearment. He slips sometimes when we're in bed, but for the king of snappy nicknames, he's not much on pet names.

"What was that sound for?" he asks, his voice settling around me like a blanket, low and warm. I close my eyes and drop my head onto my knees.

"I like it when you call me that," I whisper.

He chuckles, and goosebumps trickle across my skin in response.

I clear my throat, tucking my robe more securely around my legs, glad he can't see me blushing. "Why shouldn't I read philosophy?"

"Philosophy is for people to learn to feel and how to think," Damon says disgustedly, "and you, little doppelganger, do far too much of both."

I pause, caught by the passion behind his flippant words. "I thought it was poetry that was all about feeling."

"Pfft," Damon says dismissively. "If you don't know how to feel already, poetry is just a book in a blender with half the words sucked out."

I laugh. "What do you know about poetry?"

"They didn't always have many decent novels, Elena," Damon says scornfully. "Poetry used to be about as good as you could get."

"Poetry like what?" I ask, curious. If I'm lucky, he might even be wasted enough to tell me.

"'When a sinister person means to become your enemy," Damon recites, "they begin by trying to become your friend.'"

"That sounds like a Damon-ism, only nicer," I argue. "That's not poetry."

"William Blake," he says defensively. "Google that shit."

"So you like paranoid-people poetry." I laugh. "Why am I not surprised?"

"People with accident-prone human girlfriends have a right to be paranoid."

"I was never human when I was your girlfriend," I counter.

He pauses. "Of course not," he says, the sarcasm biting.

I cringe and drop my head back against the cushion. Why did I just say that? And now if I apologize, he'll have to say it's okay, which it obviously isn't. And Damon has been keeping me safe for a lot longer than we've been dating.

"Tell me another one," I beg, just to change the subject. "One of your favorites."

There's only silence on his end of the line and I find myself holding my breath, afraid to break it.

"'Eternity is in love with the productions of time,'" he whispers, the intonation odd, maybe a little old-fashioned.*

Tears sting my eyes and I can't help wondering if he learned that quote when he was human and in love with a vampire who didn't love him back, or when he was a vampire and in love with a human.

"Now I know you're drunk," I murmur, trying to keep my tone light. I don't want to make him sad, not when I already know he called because he was missing me.

"'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,'" Damon quotes grandly. *

I giggle in spite of myself. "Apparently I'm going to need to stay in school a lot longer to win a battle of words with you."

"Obviously," Damon says. "But I know a good tutor."

"Mmm," I say, nonchalantly. "I think I know the one. But I had to report him for sexual harassment."

"I'm appealing the verdict."

I grin, snuggling back into the couch. The hard cushions resist my efforts, unlike the couches at the boarding house that are just old enough to be comfortable and always a little warm from the fire.

"So who was the culprit this time?" I ask playfully. "Ric or Stefan?"

"Both," Damon moans. "I never stood a chance."

"The great Damon Salvatore, drunk under the table by his little brother and a history nerd," I say solemnly. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"You have no idea," he complains. "It's like Stefan's getting the tolerance of a troop leader instead of a Girl Scout."

"What's the world coming to?" I lament.

He chuckles and then we fall quiet, listening to the feel of each other. I want to tell him how much I miss him but I've said it a thousand times and the words do nothing to fill the space between us.

His breathing is starting to even out, and I wonder if he's asleep.

"Damon?" I whisper, just in case.

"Mmm?" he mumbles drowsily.

"You should go in and go to bed," I tell him reluctantly.

"Don't want to," he mutters.

I drop my forehead to my knees, hugging them tightly against my chest. I don't know if I could stand to sleep in our bed without him either.

"Don't you have automatic sprinklers?" I attempt.

"Fuck," he groans.

"Hey," I coax softly. "If you go inside, I'll tell you a bedtime story."

"Mmm," he says, but I hear his breathing increase like he's standing up. "A dirty bedtime story?"

"Yeah, like you'd ever go to sleep if I told you a dirty one," I scoff.

"Elena," he says, his vowels a little blurry around the edges. "I am a darkly dangerous, stunningly handsome vampire. I don't need a bedtime story unless it comes with a naughty little twist."

"I can hang up right now if you're not going to listen," I threaten.

"I'm listening so _hard_ right now," he promises, a mischievous laugh riding right underneath the words. I hear the heavy front door of the boarding house swing shut behind him.

"Are you lying down?" I ask him sternly.

"Mm-hmm," he purrs seductively. I roll my eyes and wait until I hear the shuffling noises settle down. Judging by the creak of cushions, he's on the downstairs couch. Still, better than the lawn. At least if he's inside he'll stay warm, and he won't be alone.

"Once upon a time there was a tortoise, and a hare…" I begin.

* * *

_Author's Note: Three cheers for Goldnox and her supernatural ability to come up with long lists of hilarious ringtones on demand! And another three cheers because for the last few days, she and I have been outselling the hell out of the entire rest of the fanfiction community on Kindle Worlds. Go TroGold writing team!_

_Luckily for all of you on fanfic dot net, __**Goldnox also has a new one-shot out: "Let it Rain,"**__ and it is Elena and Damon waking up slow and sexy and beautiful. This is the kind of fic you save to cheer yourself up on a bad day. The kind you stash in your closet like the really expensive emergency chocolate. It's beautifully written and slips in so many gorgeous details of the deeper aspects of Damon and Elena's relationship and it is sweet and funny and melty and oh, did I mention there's smut? Goldnox smut. And let's face it, people, there is no one breathing on this earth today that writes smut as good as my dear beta. Whether it is heart-squeezing lovemaking or dirty and kinky make-you-attack-your-husband-in-public HOT, she does it best. If E.L. James ever read any Goldnox smut, she would burn her laptop and flee in utter shame and disgrace to go get a job changing people's oil at Jiffy Lube. _

_So go enjoy the exquisite hour of your life that will be "Let It Rain." _

_This has been hands-down one of the most exciting weeks of my life. Desperate Love has apparently become a bit of a staff favorite around the offices at Kindle Worlds and the employees, along with Alloy Entertainment (AKA the makers of a little show called The Vampire Diaries), nominated my Desperate Love Trilogy for a number of big promotions this week that skyrocketed my sales beyond my wildest daydreams and landed me at Amazon Author rank #33, outselling authors like J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, Stephen King and personal favorites like J.R. Ward and John Green, as well as Johanna Lindsay, who wrote the first romance novel I ever read. There may have been teary, hopping, shrieking phone calls to my mother while standing in the shower of my hotel room so I wouldn't wake the neighbors. I can't confirm or deny anything for the sake of my last shred of dignity, which I think is still around here somewhere. _

_But it's also been a completely exhausting week, putting in nearly 90 hours at work plus working with Amazon copyeditors on a 1-day turnaround to do a final proofread on all three books of the Desperate Love Trilogy, and also buried to my eyeballs in beta work for some incredibly talented ladies. The muse (and my poor, abused body) could seriously use some Review Caffeine to keep me going until I can finally catch a day off. I love you all you lovely readers! Now enjoy your preview of coming attractions:_

_**Coming Next Week to "In Time We Trust"**__ - Jeremy learns life lessons from Katherine, and there's some trouble in Dalaric Bromance paradise when Damon admits that he has a vampire trick or two up his sleeve that your average vamp on the street couldn't pull off. _

* _All uncited quotes were William Blake. And Goldnox? Try to keep your I-told-you-so's to a reasonable volume._


	8. Red Cross Roadtrip

_Author's Note: Remember folks, in my universe, Katherine isn't flat broke. I find it hard to believe that a 500-year-old exceptionally paranoid vampire wouldn't have cash stashed in all kinds of places and currencies and different accounts. And also, I wish I would have posted this on Wednesday because TVD stole my skin creme joke!_

**Chapter 7: Red Cross Roadtrip**

**JEREMY**

There is nothing on.

I don't know what it is about motel TVs that makes them suck more than normal TVs, but it never fails. All I can find is The Weather Channel, boring news talk shows, and soap operas in Spanish with lots of crying and melodramatic music. There are some Skinemax channels, but I can't exactly peek at those because I'm not alone. And if I let Katherine have her own room she'd probably rob the motel, steal our truck, and be halfway to L.A. before I got out of the shower.

The sticky bathroom door scrapes open and Katherine emerges in a puff of steam. She's wearing a pink thermal with a John Deere logo on the chest and loose jeans that Matt picked up for her at the last truck stop.

Even dressed casually she doesn't look like Elena. Katherine always moves as if she knows you're looking and she enjoys it. It's kind of annoying.

I flick the channel and stare at two guys fishing for bass. Are there really people who want to watch other people catch fish? Come on, somewhere in all these channels there has to be one showing a Die Hard movie, or at least Tremors, which is the pretty much the only thing they've played on TNT since I was a kid.

"There is no hairdryer," Katherine announces.

I just blow out an incredulous breath and don't comment. How do girls never figure out that your hair dries on its own?

"You know, driving a brand new truck like that, there's no way you two are as broke as you act," Katherine says, flopping petulantly onto the bed beside me. "We could _afford_ a motel that at least came with decent shampoo._"_

"You want something better? You foot the bill. Besides, we're only going to be here for a day."

"We shouldn't be here at all, if we're trying _not_ to get me killed. Klaus is even more dangerous than Silas," she snaps. "And only Elena Gilbert would be idiotic enough to take time off from killing a two-thousand-year-old immortal to try to cure cancer."

When Elena called and asked us to get a blood sample from an Original so she could test out some theory her professor had, Katherine wasn't exactly excited about the side trip.

Katherine tries to pull one of the pillows out from behind me and I lean all my weight back, trying not to smirk as she tugs and yanks at it, finally giving up with an explosive huff of protest and a flick of her wet hair. I change the channel.

Wheel of Fortune. Doesn't Vanna White have grandchildren now? How old is this rerun? Somehow, I thought saving the world would be a lot more glamorous.

"It's not like we were busy," I remind her. "Until Silas does his favor for Nadia, she won't help him find you _or_ help us fight him. We've got nothing but time."

"Look, Matt's the one who has to try begging a blood sample off the oldest prima donna on earth," Katherine complains. "There's no reason we have to sit in this nasty little Econo-_whatever _when we're practically in New Orleans."

"Exactly. This town is overflowing with vampires. It's not safe for either of us to be out there," I remind her with a sideways glance. She was just complaining about Klaus and now she wants to go out on the town?

"You know what it's also overflowing with? Music that isn't about pickup trucks and food that doesn't come wrapped in plastic." She crosses her arms, pouting. "I can't believe the things humans consider edible, especially considering you have to eat _all the time._"She sniffs irritably.

"Try some roots and berries," I suggest. "That's what people probably ate back when you were human, right? Or was it more like mammoth jerky?"

"Ha ha," she says snidely. "Forgive me if I don't want to take culinary advice from someone younger than the wine I drink."

I shrug and flip the channel again. It's a commercial for anti-aging cream, and I let it play just to see if I can make Katherine squirm. Somehow I doubt she's resigned herself to the idea of grey hair and orthopedic shoes yet.

It took me days to get her to stop wearing heels when we were camping, and it wasn't until she sprained her ankle sinking a stiletto into soft dirt that she finally gave in and let me buy her some New Balance running shoes with some of the cash Damon sent with us. Judging by the blissful look on her face when she took her first steps in them, she's in love. But of course she can't say thanks.

Katherine huffs out an exasperated sigh and looks toward the window. "Seriously, Jeremy?" she says, softening her voice. "Can we _please _do something other than camp and drive? If Silas finds us, I really don't want to have spent my last days on earth acting out the L.L. Bean version of a wholesome family vacation."

"Until yesterday you were more like an advertisement for Robitussin," I remind her. "We got you the shower and the bed you've been nagging us about. Take a nap or something."

She slumps back against the rigid headboard with an aggravated sigh. The back of her head raps against the wall and she winces, reaching up to rub the sore spot gingerly.

Without looking at her, I pull one of the pillows out from behind me and toss it over. She fluffs it a couple times and then places it behind her without a word.

Something about sitting next to Katherine like this is a little too companionable. I turn to one of the soap operas and nudge up the volume so the chatter of heartfelt Spanish fills the room.

Katherine turns to look at me, her chin angled slyly down as always, as if she's protecting her neck. Or getting ready to pounce.

"Aren't you nervous?" she asks abruptly.

"About what?"

"About being alone with me." She tilts her head, catlike. "I mean, I did bite you. And feed you to Silas."

"What, you want to arm wrestle?" I ask her, not looking away from the TV. "I'm game."

She sniffs. "You men are all so stupid. You think I need muscle to be deadly? Silas didn't think so."

"I think you're only dangerous when you're not getting what you want." I turn and meet her eyes steadily. "And right now, you have two bodyguards and a free ride. So no, I'm not nervous."

Her lip curls delicately. "Like you and your little friend are the best I could do for bodyguards? Please. I could buy a team of Navy SEALS and a walled estate in Tuscany, complete with its own vineyard. I hardly need two adolescents and an EconoLodge."

"Fine. I'll bite." I glare at her. "Why are you still here, Katherine?"

"Maybe I just enjoy the irony." She smiles smugly, uncrossing her legs and rising from the bed with a fluid movement that looks like she practiced it in the mirror. She reaches into the cheap tote bag we bought her and takes out a bottle of wine.

"Hey, where'd you get that?" I protest, my brows snapping down. She hasn't been out of my sight all day except to go to the bathroom.

She peeks back over her shoulder with a smile. "Don't worry. I'll share."

"Katherine, if you go sneaking off, we can't protect you," I warn.

"And that's _obviously_ your first priority," she sneers, producing a corkscrew from her bag. "You know the problem with you, Little Gilbert?" she says disdainfully. "You know what it is about you that always gets you killed?"

My jaw tightens and my teeth grind together.

"It's that with you, what you see is what you get." She unwraps a plastic hotel cup and pours her wine, not even bothering to check my reaction. "You're not stupid, but you're simple." She leans back against the dresser and takes a sip. "And it bites you in the ass, every single time."

"You don't know anything about me," I say tightly.

"I know that you're lying," she says lightly, pursing her lips in a look of mockingly fake concern. "I know that you're hiding something. I know that you're carrying two phones."

I nearly flinch and I have to look away. My heart is thumping hard in my chest even though I know she can't possibly recognize Bonnie's phone. I try to think of a good reason why I'm carrying two and come up blank.

"Why do you care?" I challenge her instead.

She tilts her head and shrugs breezily. "I don't. I'm just bored. Wine?"

I almost say yes, and then realize what she's trying to do. "No, I'm good."

"Suit yourself." She swirls her wine in its plastic cup, strolling over to the window and peeking out the edge of the curtain, bending over a little even though she doesn't need to. I look away, embarrassed. I can't tell if she's trying to be sexy or if she just doesn't know how else to act.

She turns back as if a thought has just occurred to her. "I could help you, you know."

"Do you fool other people with this crap?" I snort and shake my head. "Strutting around like you're on stage, talking all mysterious. But you never _say _anything." I shake my head and turn the volume up a little more.

"Fine." She lets the curtain fall. "You want to talk about something real? Let's talk about who gave you that phone. Why can't you call them on the prepaid phone Damon bought you? Is it the same person you're always going off into the woods to call? Do they know where you are?" Her eyes glint sharply. "You want to protect me, Jeremy? Then stop being sloppy and putting us all at risk."

I swallow hard. She doesn't know it's Bonnie. Not yet.

I toss her an irritated glance to cover my relief. "If you think you don't need us, and you're so scared of being caught, why haven't you tried to run again?"

Her eyes shutter, her too-familiar face unreadable. "I'm not done with what I came here to do."

"Done with _what_, Katherine?" I ask her, frustrated. "Look, maybe we haven't been very nice about it, but we're helping you. Me and Damon and Matt, even Elena. Even after everything you've done to her. We're all working to keep you away from Silas. So whatever else you're plotting, you need to stop."

A bitter little smile plays across her face. "You wouldn't know the first thing about what I'm plotting."

"So why don't you tell me?" I burst out, the plastic of the remote control creaking a little under my too-tight grip.

A commercial comes on with an animated lizard, his exaggerated accent obnoxiously loud in the small room. I hit the mute button.

"I have a better idea," Katherine says haughtily. "How about you dig out one of your little phones and find Damon. Tell him we're going to be needing him to call up an old friend."

"What are you talking about?" I ask, feeling a little dizzy. I can't even remember how this conversation started.

She smiles. "Ever notice there's always a raven around when Damon isn't?"

"What? No."

She clicks her tongue. "My, my. He _has_ gone tame. Probably bored half to death by the company of my frowny little doppelganger."

"Are you saying Damon has a pet raven?" It feels like a dumb question but I'm curious in spite of myself.

"I'm _saying_ he can use a raven to spy on Silas, because Silas can't compel a bird to turn on us," Katherine says patronizingly.

I scrub a hand through my hair. "Damon can compel animals? Can all vampires do that?"

Katherine's lips tighten. "No. It's quite uncommon, actually."

My eyes narrow. "Could you control animals? When you were still a vampire?"

"I had more important things to do than play Dr. Doolittle," she snaps, and I snicker.

"No wonder you didn't say anything before. Does Damon know you can't pull it off?" I laugh harder while she glares daggers at me.

I pull out my new phone and speed dial Damon, not even trying to wipe the grin off my face. He answers on the first ring.

"How's the Red Cross Roadtrip going? Did the Homecoming Queen eat the Prom King yet?"

"Nah. Matt doesn't piss her off like you always do," I tell him off-handedly. "Hey, Katherine wanted me to call and tell you to compel a crow to spy on Silas. You know, since she's pretty much useless now." I smirk, watching her pretend to ignore me. "Hey, is it normal for you to have special powers that your _sire _doesn't even have?"

Katherine rolls her eyes and flounces over to refill her cup.

Damon chuckles. "You're kidding. She actually told you that? Did she give you the vampire secret decoder ring too?"

"She can't hear you," I remind him. "Crappy human hearing, remember?"

Her eyes narrow and she returns to the bed, roughly fluffing the pillow I gave her before she curls petulantly beside me. I can tell she's straining her ears to listen in, even though her eyes are focused on the silently playing commercial for antacids.

I can hear the amusement in his voice even as he warns, "Don't poke the rattlesnake, Jer. Just because Elena yanked her fangs doesn't mean the venom came out with them."

"You're one to talk," I scoff.

"Yeah, well, let Mata Hari know that I'm way ahead of her on the Silas front." His voice turns sardonic. "Turns out I might have learned a thing or two from always sticking around to fight the big bads while she's busy scampering the other direction."

"You sure you want me to repeat that?" I goad. "I don't know, her biceps are at least as big around as my wrists. I think she could probably take you."

Damon snorts derisively. "Oh, and tell her thanks a bundle for getting crusty old immortal blood all over my favorite straight razor."

"Right," I tell him, even though I have no idea what he's talking about. As usual. "Hey, when I get home, will you show me that bird trick?"

He raises his voice slightly. "No, Jeremy, I will not help you use innocent animals to spy on girls in the shower."

I hear a grouchy voice in the background and I nearly drop the phone.

"Wait, who's there with you?" I don't want to say it out loud because Damon'll give me crap, but it sounded _just_ like Ric.

"What, you think you're the only one who's allowed to come back from the dead? Teenagers these days," Damon says disapprovingly. "They're so self-involved."

"Did Silas find somebody to drop the veil?" I ask urgently.

Katherine's staring impatiently, waiting for me to explain. If the veil's down, maybe that's why I haven't seen Bonnie. She could be with Elena right now. Maybe she'll finally tell her what happened and I won't have to. And the longer I think about it, the more convinced I am that it was Ric's voice I heard in the background.

"Can I talk to him?" I ask, my voice coming out a little higher than I meant it to. I look away from Katherine and cough like I've got something in my throat.

I saw Ric once on the Other Side, before Bonnie brought me back, but I wasn't really over there long enough to get the hang of how to search people out.

"Don't go getting all misty-eyed about your fake father figure," Damon orders. "The Ghosty Gestapo only gave him a temporary work visa."

I blink. "Okay..."

"Look, I'll have him call you later and you can have your whole Beaver Cleaver moment," Damon says. "You're in the Big Easy, kid. Go have some fun. Just stay the hell away from anything fanged or furry."

He hangs up before I can ask anything else, and I'm left staring at the phone in my hand.

If Ric is back, will he know that Bonnie is on the Other Side? Why haven't I seen her since the night Silas attacked Matt? Sometimes I catch a glimpse of Bonnie out of the corner of my eye but she's gone when I look. I wonder if she's pulling back, trying to let me move on. But how can I do that when she still expects me to lie for her?

"What was that all about?" Katherine demands.

"None of your business," I mumble.

"Little tip? The whole dark and mysterious thing doesn't suit you," she says snidely. "You'd be better off with moody and artistic."

I ignore her, but I don't like the light in her eyes. She tips her chin up and an uneasy feeling creeps down my arms.

"Let me guess. Damon's about to figure out whatever you're hiding, but you're still too much of a coward to just tell him."

My throat closes like her fist just slammed into it.

I pull my eyes away from her and turn the sound on the TV back on. It takes me two tries to hit the right button. I'm keeping Bonnie's secret because she asked me to, because I'm her friend. How can I deny her anything after what she's done for me?

Katherine laughs softly, contemptuously. "That was almost too easy."

My head snaps toward her, a glare twisting my face.

Her eyes are straying to the curtained window again and suddenly I remember about Elijah.

"Is that what this is all about, Katherine? You're pissed that I won't let you out to go see your boyfriend? Well guess what? If he wanted you, he wouldn't be down here in the first place."

Her lips press together, the delicate curve of her cheeks looking hard underneath the vindictive gleam in her eye.

"Elijah's about to figure out what women have been learning for centuries. A baby isn't enough make a family." She slides off the bed and paces across the room to the small table. "And I'm hardly lining up to play doting auntie alongside him. He'll be lucky if he can keep Klaus from eating the squalling brat."

"Nice try, Katherine," I tell her unsympathetically. I thought she was a better liar. "What, you've never been dumped before?"

I shake my head, turning back to a rerun of 1000 Ways To Die. Figures when something decent finally comes on I'm too pissed to enjoy it. "You deserve it after what you did to Stefan and Damon."

"Oh really?" She drops into a chair and crosses her legs, the movement oddly vicious-looking. "If I hadn't, you wouldn't have ever met Anna or Alaric. Your sister would have died a half-dozen times over without the Salvatores to protect her, and Caroline would have been finished after her first fender bender. Would you take it all back? Just so I wouldn't break their tender little hearts?" she challenges, pouting her lips in mock sympathy before she drops the act, her eyes cold and a little tired. "Grow up."

She downs the rest of her wine and sets her plastic cup down so hard that it tips over and rolls across the table.

"And that's supposed to justify what you did to them?" I ask incredulously, quashing a sudden pang of guilt. "They weren't supposed to be vampires, Katherine. What about all the people Stefan killed? _You_ made him like that. And then you disappeared and let Damon spend all that time trying to open the tomb when all you had to do was show up for five seconds and tell him you weren't interested."

"You think I wanted to be dead to them?" she hisses. "You think that was the _plan_?"

A vein twitches in her temple.

"You want to play the hindsight game, Little Gilbert? How about this? I've had dozens of different lives, lived in more countries than you could label on a map, and after half a millennium I'm stuck in a gritty little hotel room with a mouthy_ child_ I've already killed and do you know why? Because I've had to lie to everyone who has ever mattered to me, just to stay one step ahead of Klaus. And for what? So I can end up with every wrinkle, foot fungus and overdue credit card bill that comes with a human life?"

She gets up and retrieves her bottle of wine. I must have really ticked her off because she moves like a normal person for once, her steps thumping quick and hard against the worn carpet.

"Trust me," she says cynically, her voice tired and a little scratchy. "Whatever secret you're holding on to, it's not as important as you think."

I stare at the screen so I won't have to look at her face.

Elena's not going to be able to handle losing Bonnie, not after everything that happened this year. Especially not when she finds out how it happened. She'll blame herself, and she'll try to find some way to undo it, to take it back. There probably is a way, but if somebody's life has to be traded for Bonnie's, it should be mine.

And I don't want to die.

It makes me a coward and a hypocrite and it's stupid. I know it's stupid. But it's the truth.

And no matter what, we can't keep it a secret forever. When Elena finds out, she's going to feel horrible that she didn't know, that she was living her life instead of mourning for her best friend.

It doesn't matter _when_ I tell her, it's going to suck. At least if I wait until Bonnie's ready, I'll have one less person who is mad at me.

Katherine's looking at the window again.

There's a wobbly feeling in my gut and I try to concentrate on the TV instead, but I can't stop thinking about Bonnie. What if something happened to me? If something goes wrong when I go after Silas? Or if we get into a car accident?

Nobody would ever have to know that I'm the reason Bonnie's dead. She'd just disappear and no one would ever realize what a crazy, selfless sacrifice she made for me. But it would drive Elena crazy. She'd never stop searching for Bonnie if she just quit getting texts and emails one day.

I don't want to keep lying. And I don't want to keep wondering what they'll think of me when they all find out the truth.

I don't want to be like Katherine.

Suddenly, my skin feels chilled and I'm more afraid than I've been since Klaus took Elena to drain her in his ritual.

I have to do this.

I turn off the TV and drop the remote on the bed, grabbing my phone with tingling fingers. I'll call Damon first. He'll know how we should handle this, and he's already guessed most of it already. Of everyone, at least I know I won't have to hear disappointment in his voice when I tell him why she's gone.

Katherine's examining her nails but a small smile curls her lips when I head for the door.

"That's what I thought," she says, sitting back and tipping her re-filled plastic cup in my direction, and there's something sad about the cynical set to her mouth. "You might die young, little cousin, but I doubt you'll have many regrets."

I pause with my hand on the doorknob, staring at her. "Why do you even care?"

Katherine's face goes smooth and unreadable and her lips curve. She kicks her feet up on the opposite chair and crosses one New Balance sneaker smugly over the other. "Let's just say that I've got my own agenda."

**X X X**

**DAMON**

"What, so now you're screening my phone calls?" Ric says, stretching out his arms to rest them on the back of the couch. He eyes me thoughtfully. "You could have at least let me say hi."

"And have to sit here and listen to all his pent-up angst about how you died and left him to the parental mercies of his sister's deadbeat boyfriend?" I snort and slide my phone back in my pocket, heading for the decanters. "How about you bill that therapy session out as a one-on-one?"

Ric looks skeptical, but he doesn't comment. "You're going to make me ask, aren't you?"

I sigh. "I knew once I got a ring on your finger you were going to want a commitment to go with it."

"Ha ha," he says. "So what's with the bird?"

I don't turn around, pretending to peruse my liquor choices. Silent wings slice through the open window and straight toward Ric's head, bursting into sound with a flurry of flapping feathers as the raven banks hard at the last second. Ric throws up his hands to cover his head and I wince as he knocks the bird out of the air. It squawks and rights itself, swooping back to a safe perch on the windowsill.

"What bird?" I ask innocently.

Ric jumps to his feet, staring hard at the raven. His newly disheveled hair lends a slightly panicked look to his wide eyes. "What the hell just happened?"

I press calm into the bird's mind and he settles on the windowsill despite the threat of Ric's obvious agitation. I can feel his attention shift to the trees outside the window.

"Easy Ric," I tell him. "It's not going to come tap tap tapping at your door. I'm just using him as my shiny new spy drone."

"You didn't have one of those things before," he protests, still not able to drag his eyes from the raven. "And how can you...know what it sees?"

"I didn't need one before." I make myself a drink and tilt the decanter at Ric. He nods emphatically. I pour the glass a little deeper and give it to him, because he looks like he needs the liquid bolster more than I do.

"Thanks," he says, the word filling the space inside my head that can't stop remembering the hollow scrape his glass used to make when I slid it over in front of his empty barstool.

"Besides," I tell him, "it takes a lot of blood to grease those wheels and I didn't want to bankrupt the local Bleeders on Loan."

"So that's why you've been glutting right alongside Stefan," he says, his eyes unnervingly steady on me.

My fingers dance from scotch to bourbon and back again before I make my choice. "Hey, nobody's had to gas up the hearst. Besides, it's all for a good cause."

Ric takes a healthy swig and sits back down on the couch, eyeing the raven suspiciously. I give it a little mental nudge from across the room and it takes flight eagerly.

"So how does that work? Can you see through its eyes like those old Beastmaster movies?"

"Little vampire biology lesson," I tell him, taking a quick sip of scotch. This one has a deep bite to it that Stefan hates and I love. "More blood equals more vampy prowess."

"I take it that's why lately you've been talking like you're three cappuccinos away from an ADHD diagnosis?" he asks dryly.

"Nah. I was wittier than you even without the bulk up diet." He snorts in obvious disagreement, and I ignore him. "The stronger you get, the sharper your senses get. You're faster, your compulsion is harder to shake, and you can play Freddy Krueger with people's dreams. You can take a walk inside their waking minds too, if they're weak or distracted."

"What?" Ric sits up quickly. "You're telling me that Twilight shit is true?"

"What do you know about Twilight, Ric?" I raise an eyebrow and he clenches his jaw.

"Come on, everybody with a pulse knows about those sparkly emo boys and all the mind-reading crap," Ric complains, glancing away.

"Jenna make you take her to the movies?" I ask knowingly.

"Why don't you just read my mind, asshole?"

I chuckle. "Okay, the whole reading-waking-minds thing is white buffalo rare, so don't get all jumpy. The person has to be fully relaxed and you generally have to be an old, well-fed vampire. And normally people aren't that relaxed around well-fed vampires."

"So you can put ideas in a bird's head the same way you give a person a dream," Ric says, one finger tapping absently against his glass as he puts it together. "So wait, can you make an animal attack someone?"

"It's always a weapon to you, isn't it Ric?" I smirk.

No wonder we're friends.

"Look, when you compel a person, you can use words. Easy shortcut," I spread my hands. "With an animal, you have to know their mind well enough to make them understand you. More than that, you have to know_ yourself_ well enough that when you enter their mind, you can tell which feelings belong to the animal and which are your own. So you can't just try it with any species. Your minds have to be a little…_simpatico_," I tell him, and shrug quickly before I take a sip of my scotch.

The corner of his mouth kicks up. "Just ravens, then, huh?"

I smile darkly. "I like to fly."

Ric chuckles, but his expression is thoughtful. "Yeah. I could see that."

My eyes flick to Stefan's wing of the house. I haven't seen him yet today, and I may need to dig him up before long to make sure he stays out of trouble. "If Baby Bro keeps up his binge drinking marathon, I might be able to compel something a lot bigger than a raven soon."

"You know, just because he jumps off a cliff doesn't mean you have to," Ric says quietly.

"Gotta keep my weight class up," I tell him, my eyes flaring so he knows it's not a joke.

If I let Stefan get stronger than me, I won't be able to stop him from finishing off his prey. And if Ric hangs around much longer, I'm going to have to teach him to live-feed too. That borrowed Original strength is gonna be a bitch, and I'm really hoping his dark side doesn't get a taste for the red stuff.

"Damon," Ric says, an uneasy note to his voice, and my phone vibrates.

I yank it out of my pocket and silence it without even looking at the screen.

"What." I take a quick sip of my scotch because I never like anything he says in that tone.

"Did you ever do that to Elena?"

I let my lips curve into a wicked smile that's fed by the flash of anger deep in my chest. "You're going to have to be a lot more specific if you want an answer to that one."

Ric looks pained. "Knock it off, Damon, I'm serious. Did you ever mess with her head when she was sleeping? I know you were in her room a lot more often than you came through the front door, even after I nailed the window shut."

"Nails? To keep out a vampire? Why didn't you just go for the garlic garland and a nice cushy welcome mat?" I scoff, shaking my head. "If you didn't want me to pick them out, you should have coated them with vervain."

He looks at me, and he waits.

"No," I snap.

His eyes narrow just slightly, but he doesn't say a word.

"Okay, I might have taken a peek once or twice," I relent. "But I didn't put anything in there that she didn't like, if you know what I mean."

Ric comes up off the couch so fast that all I see of it are the stars that burst before my eyes when the back of my head hits the fireplace. I barely manage to hang onto my glass, and when I see the furious light in his eyes that tells me Ric's not home anymore, I wish I were already drunk.

"What did you put in her head, Damon?" he snarls. "What kind of sick little fantasies did you fill her dreams with, you perverted piece of shit?"

I smash my glass into his face with my right hand and straight-arm him with my left. He hits the couch and goes over backwards in a tumble of legs and cushions.

I've got the stake out of the side table in less than a breath and then I'm over the back of the couch after him. I can't let him get anywhere near Stefan, not after what the vampire hunter has seen of my brother's bloodlust and the bare thread of control he has over it.

My phone buzzes.

Ric's not behind the couch.

* * *

_Author's Note: Heaps of thanks to my amazing beta, Goldnox. May the karma fairy repay her goodness with alliterative brilliance, and many accolades for her painfully lovely ongoing Delena fic, "Unthinkable."_

_Also, you should all go check out Nightlightbright's fic, "River Deep Ocean Wide." For three reasons: 1. It is pure good fun AH Delena 2. She's about to have a baby, like a whole real baby and that kind of stuff is hard work! 3. She writes me decapitation haikus for fun. I mean really, name me 5 pregnant women in the universe who can write world class Delena AND decapitation haikus. Okay, I'll go easy on you. Name me two. You can't? Okay, then you best go read you some "River Deep Ocean Wide" then shouldn't you? _

_Thanks to every last reader out there for supporting this story, and for every follow, favorite and review- I absolutely love to hear what your favorite parts were for each chapter! _


	9. Picking Up the Pieces

_Author's Note: So I know that Damon's bird is often referred to interchangeably as a crow or raven, and that in the show, it was a crow. I decided to make it a raven here, as I felt the characteristics of that animal best fit Damon. Jeremy makes reference once to it as a crow, but that's his mistake as I felt somebody of his age and lack of interest in ornithology would likely not know the difference. _

* * *

**Chapter 8: Picking Up The Pieces**

**DAMON**

I dig my heels into the floor and leap back, landing with my shoulder blades to the wall and my eyes wide open.

"Looking for me?" Ric's voice is guttural, and it sounds like dust and abandoned furniture and blood. The jolt that goes through me has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the abrupt reminder of the worst night of my long life.

My best friend is holding the crossbow I keep hidden behind the pots and pans in the kitchen.

Adrenaline sharpens his face in my visual field until his eyes appear to glow with an acidic kind of energy. How did he know the crossbow was there? Has his hunter persona been searching the house at night, roaming while he thought he was asleep?

"What did you do to that girl?" Ric asks.

In my pocket, my phone finally stops buzzing as it goes to voicemail.

I straighten from my automatic defensive crouch, my shoulders flexing. "Fuck you. I never changed her dreams. I didn't give her pretty ponies when she was watching her dad suck river water or a shiny rumpled-puppy paradise when she was digging Jenna's grave with her bare hands. I didn't even turn down the sheets when she was dreaming me into her bed."

The stake feels sour in my hand and I throw it into his face, the wood smacking hard and cold across the bridge of his nose. He doesn't flinch as it clatters to the ground.

"I kept Stefan's ugly necklace on her beautiful neck and I was the one who re-filled it when the vervain went stale," I spit the words at him.

Ric blinks, his face starting to change but I don't care.

I stalk across the room toward him and his fucking crossbow that he made, loaded with quarrels that I sharpened. "The only thing I ever _made_ her do was to forget me, to stay away from me. For her own damn good."

His expression is wavering, the lines caught somewhere in between his two selves and I keep going until the sharp end of the quarrel presses dead into my chest.

"She dreams about you torturing Caroline," I hiss, beyond furious. "If _I_ gave my girl dreams, she'd enjoy them a hell of a lot more than that."

His eyes flash dark and I can hear the creak of his finger tightening on the trigger. I snatch it away from him, whipping the butt of the crossbow across his cheek with a crack of breaking wood.

Ric staggers and goes down on one knee and my phone starts to buzz again.

I answer it with my left hand so I can keep my right on the crossbow, aimed for Ric's lower intestines in case he's still feeling feisty.

"What?"

"Finally, _God_," Jeremy complains. "What have you been doing that you can't answer your phone when I know you're home?"

"Practicing my audition dance for Swan Lake," I snap. "Big surprise, kid. Things don't always revolve around you."

Ric braces his hands on his knees and I can see they're shaking. He's fighting for it, but he ain't there yet. The sight reminds me that I'm being a dick to Jeremy and that he normally doesn't call three times in five minutes.

"What do you need?" I ask, attempting to sound somewhat less pissed off than I am.

"Damon, I need to tell you something," he says, the quaver deep in his voice not hidden by the weight of the words.

I know that tone, because for all the shit I give him, Gilbert's a little bit emo for a reason. His life sucks on a really regular basis. And from the sound of it, something's the basement cell kind of wrong on his end of the phone.

"Great!" I say with false enthusiasm. "Why don't you start by telling me your arms and legs are intact and you're _not _looking at something with a Stefan face and an ego upgrade?"

"Damon, Bonnie's dead."

"Fuck. How dead?"

I've been waiting for the Bonnie-lost-her-mind-from-black-magic-and-I've-bee n-hiding-her-in-a-cave call, but this one is from another area code entirely.

"I've been seeing her ghost for four months now," Jeremy says quietly. "Damon, it was because of me. It was because she brought me back to life."

A sound of pain hisses out from between Ric's teeth and he grabs his head, pressing hard against his temples. I take a measured step back and keep the crossbow up, my finger on the trigger.

"What does that mean, Jeremy? You can't play musical chairs with the Other Side. It doesn't work like that."

"It wasn't a trade. The magic she had to channel to drop the veil and then to keep me on this side…it was too much for her, Damon." This time the tremor isn't so well hidden and my hand tightens on the crossbow.

I push a breath out through my teeth and move my finger away from the trigger. I don't want to accidentally shoot Ric before I see which side of him comes out on top of the silent argument that has him doubled over on my floor.

"Why am I getting this call now?" I ask carefully, and as soon as I say it I know the answer.

Fuck.

"Bonnie didn't want me to tell anyone," Jeremy says miserably. "I've been sending texts and emails from her all summer. I didn't think, after everything, that Elena could–"

"I know, kid," I say quietly. Double fuck. "I get it. Look…" I throw a desperate glance to Ric, but he's sitting full on the floor now in the midst of the broken glass, his breath still uneven as his hands clench on his knees, his eyes confused when he looks up at me.

I turn away and lower my voice. "Look, Bonnie was never very careful with magic. If she didn't burn herself out trying to bring you back, it would have probably happened some other way, eventually. Or maybe raising the veil would have been too much even without the extra spell. At least this way, Elena didn't lose everything."

Jeremy sucks in a hard breath on the other end of the phone and I know what he's thinking because I'd be thinking it, too. I move further away from Ric, hoping he's still too out of it to overhear. Nobody else would say what I'm about to say, because it's about as far from politically correct as you can get without shooting a puppy.

"Listen, Jeremy," I growl. "Elena loves you more than Bonnie. She loves you more than _anyone, _and as long as you're okay, she'll get through this."

He's not breathing, and then there's a tiny hitch that tells me he's trying like hell not to cry into the phone. I've got to get off the line before he screws that up for himself or he'll probably get himself killed trying to show me how badass he is to make up for it.

"Damon," he says in a voice squeezed ugly with strain, "I don't know if–"

"I'll tell her," I cut him off. "I'll tell her, and she'll call you and you'll see that I'm fucking right, as usual. Stick close to Katherine and don't do anything stupid, okay?"

I hang up before I can hear anything else, and wish for a second that I would have gotten Katherine a phone. Screw it, I know she's too cagey to let Jeremy do anything dangerous because it would put her at risk too. And with any luck, she'll get impatient enough with his broody face to piss him off, which will keep him distracted until I can talk to Elena.

"Damon?" I turn around to see Ric climbing slowly to his feet. "Was that Jeremy? What happened?" He blinks at the shards of glass all around him and I can see the shame behind his eyes. "Did I break something?"

My eye twitches and I head for the drink cart, eyeing the levels in the decanters skeptically.

"Let's see." I pick up a new glass and the largest decanter. "You accused me of piping the Penthouse Channel into Elena's Psychic Dream Network, I fed you my favorite bourbon glass, Jeremy called to say Elena's best friend is six feet under and four months a ghost, and Stefan failed to react to any of our growly, crossbow-shooty sounds. Which means he probably went out the window hours ago and is doing his best to make Mystic Falls a dry county. And _not," _I stretch my neck stiffly to the side, "in respect to the liquor laws. And thank Christ for that because I need a drink possibly even more than I need to forget the last hour of my life."

"Shit." Ric gets up and reaches past me into the lower cupboard, pulling out a fresh bottle of his preferred brand of mid-grade bourbon and cracking the seal. He takes a long, throat-bobbing swallow, and then goes to get a broom.

I give him a hopeful look as he starts to sweep. "Any chance you want to play DD so I can take the liquid highway all the way to Whitmore?"

"Yeah, no," he vetoes me with a humorless chuckle. "Go get the dustpan."

I stare moodily at the decanters and don't move.

Ric pauses in his sweeping and reaches for his bourbon, tossing a glance my way. "Don't we need to find Stefan before we go to Whitmore?"

I drop on the couch and empty my glass down my throat. "Fuck Stefan. If I'm going to have two vampires off the rails, the one with 147 years of second chances is on his own."

Ric hands me his bottle and goes to get the dustpan.

For a long moment, longer than any of us can afford, the only sounds are the scrape of sharp glass and the empty slide of liquor.

I need to get up.

I need to deal with Elena, then Jeremy, then my damned brother, and Silas, always fucking Silas and after that Katherine. Oh and Professor McSaviorson and his crazy blood theory, as if any of the Originals will care to donate to saving the human race before some kind of apocalyptic event makes them run low on snack food.

"Wanna talk about it?" Ric offers.

"No, I don't want to _talk _about it," I sneer. "What I want to do is kill something, eat someone, and go the fuck to bed."

Ric nods. He takes the bottle from me, drinks, and hands it considerately back. "Yeah."

The bottle feels good and familiar in my hands. Bonnie's already been dead for four months. What's another day?

"Screw it, let's get wasted and sight in the crossbows," I say carelessly.

"I don't know that we would exactly improve their aim with that method," Ric says dryly.

I grunt and pass the bourbon. We're halfway down already and if we keep going at this rate, neither of us will be able to drive to Whitmore in an hour. I can't stop thinking about how Elena reacted before, when Bonnie nearly burned out her magic trying to take down Klaus and ended up having to fake her own death.

I can still feel the mark of Elena's hand across my cheek after she slapped me.

The house is too quiet. Goddamn Stefan. He was useless last time, too. Useless at comforting Elena, useless at stopping Klaus. Useless at doing what had to be done.

When the bottle finds its way back into my hand, I set it down on the table with a hollow thunk.

"I know what it will be like, Ric," I tell him, and I hate the way my voice squeezes out of my throat. "I already know exactly what her face will look like when she finds out that Bonnie's dead. How the fuck am I supposed to go up there and do that to her when I know that this time, I can't take it back?"

"You're not," Ric says solidly. "Because I'm going to do it for you."

My head snaps up. "Oh, fuck no. And let you get repo'ed halfway through the conversation? That's going to calm her _right _down."

"They're witches, not a bill collection agency," Ric counters irritably. "And I _am_ going to help kill Silas so maybe they won't take me back yet." He stands up. "Give me the keys to Jeremy's new car and I'll go right now."

I eye him suspiciously. "Why? It's going to be a waterworks extravaganza at best and a bloodbath of displaced grief at worst. Why would you volunteer for that?"

"Because you suck at delivering bad news," Ric says flatly.

"Fuck that," I say disgustedly. "I'm the only one around here man enough to tell Elena what she doesn't want to hear."

"But you give her the bottom line before she's ready to hear it and that's the last thing she needs right now," he argues.

I come off the couch in a single line of hot, angry muscle. "Are you saying I don't know how to take care of my girl?"

"I'm saying you're a dick, Damon," he says, frustrated. "And a prag–"

I hit him.

He staggers back, blood bright on his split lip. His eyes spark angrily and I growl, thirsty for a brawl and not caring much which version of him I have to have it with.

His fist is a blur even to my adrenaline-spurred vision and there's a crack of bone, pain screeching through the root of every tooth in the right side of my head.

"You're my friend, damn it," he curses. "And that means you're supposed to listen when I talk."

I don't have much of a choice, at least not until my jaw heals, but his words just took the fun out of this fight anyway.

"I was _saying_ that you're a pragmatist," he explains, his eyes still flashing but his voice patient. "If I heard you right, Bonnie might have died anyway, even if she didn't bring back Jeremy. But Elena's not going to be able to process anything but the fact that her best friend is dead. She needs to grieve, Damon, or she won't heal."

I try to glare at him, but the pinch and scrape of knitting bone aches all the way into my cheekbones and makes my eyes water, so it's probably less than intimidating. At least he's smart enough not to fucking laugh.

He walks over to the foyer table and opens the drawer where I put all the extra keys, though I have no idea how he knows that. I doubt even Stefan knows that I have spares for everything, much less where I keep them.

Ric pulls out the shiniest key ring and looks back at me, his face serious. For the first time I feel the twist of doubt. Elena adores him and I'm not exactly the comforting type. What if he's right? But every time I've ever trusted Elena to someone else, they've fucked it up.

"Wait, what are the chances you're going to flip and get all stabby with her?" I challenge.

"While talking about the death of a girl my alter ego tried to kill?" He shakes his head. "Zero. Besides, if I kept from killing you, I can keep it in line for her no problem." He flips the keys around his finger once and catches them with a snap.

"You take care of your brother," he tells me. "Let me take care of Elena."

When he closes the door behind him, my fists clench, but I let him go.

**X X X**

**ELENA**

A breeze sifts through my hair and across the open pages of my book, the subtle scratch of strands across rough paper blending with the rustle of leaves from above. The trees on campus have bigger leaves than the ones back home and the sound is different, though I couldn't define exactly how. I think I like it.

I'm starting to settle into the college routine, finally. I know what times to hit the caf to avoid the rush, and Caroline and I go for a run every morning when the air still has a bite to it. Both are for the purposes of blending in, though the run always makes me ache for a chance to really stretch my legs.

I like the chatter and energy of campus life, the way I can make a friend in the space of a single conversation. This morning I met a girl with electric blue mascara named Trinda and this afternoon I'm going to help her paint banners to advertise the Peer Counselors' ice cream social for incoming freshman.

But part of me wishes college were something I could do during the day, and then go back to my real life at night. Whitmore feels like a vacation interlude, a study-abroad semester.

It doesn't feel like home.

I push my hair impatiently behind my ear, scanning the parking lot once more before I turn back to my book, starting over at the top of the page. It's actually really good, a short and well-written discussion about the role of transportation systems in Germany during World War II. But it can't hold my attention right now. I hear an engine gearing down to turn in off the street, but when I look up, it's only a Volkswagen Beetle.

Damon texted me to say Ric was coming up for a visit this afternoon, which was weird, but maybe they haven't had a chance to get Ric his own phone yet.

I guess we'll have to get Jeremy a new phone eventually, too. He had to ditch his for a disposable, prepaid phone so Silas couldn't find him. His last text sounded oddly cheerful for somebody on the run but I'm still glad Matt is with him. Matt's down to earth kindness will hopefully help buffer Jeremy from Katherine's inevitable power plays.

I curl my bare toes into the grass and tell myself I won't look up at the next sound, but I barely last two seconds when I hear the next car engine. This time it really is Ric, driving a small Audi SUV. I close my book without stopping to mark the page, slipping my feet back into my sandals and hurrying down to the curb to meet him.

A wide smile splits my face and I catch myself bouncing a little on my toes just like Caroline does when she gets excited. I drop my heels back to the ground self-consciously, but can't resist grabbing Ric in a tight hug before he even gets the driver's door closed.

"Hey, Elena," he greets, and his arms are strong and wonderfully secure, like I could disappear into them.

The cotton of his shirt is a little wrinkled and he smells like Old Spice deodorant and woodsmoke, as if he came straight from the boarding house. This time of year it is cool enough in the mornings that sometimes Damon makes a fire when he first gets up and then lets it die as the day warms with the sun.

Nostalgia echoes through me as I step back. I've watched Damon make so many fires, fascinated with the easy way he handles the kindling; laying the wood exactly the same way every time. I've never seen him need more than a single match to get it to catch.

"So, how's it look?" Ric nods at the SUV. "You think Jeremy will like it?"

I glance over. It's very shiny and the lines of it are more modern than I expected. I frown. "Wait, is that new? There's _no_ way the insurance check covered a brand new one. And I was thinking maybe a Ford or something. Why did Damon get an Audi?"

"Because Damon shops for cars like an old woman. He gave me the year, model number and a credit card, based solely on safety rating," Ric explains with a wry smile. "Amidst much complaining about how many cars you and Jeremy have wrecked. He also said that Jeremy would be mowing the lawn until 2030 to pay him back for the difference. We meant for you to drive this one until we can replace yours, too, but there was nobody free to ferry me and the car up here today."

I cross my arms and give Ric a stern look. "You know, he can bring Stefan up here if he's afraid to leave him alone. I've seen Stefan at his worst plenty of times. I'm not going to break."

"Um, yeah. About that." Ric scratches his jaw. "Apparently the sorority girl thing isn't just a joke. Damon didn't think it was smart to get Stefan close to a college at this point."

"Right..." I nod jerkily and attempt to put a smile back on my face.

Like Damon said, this isn't Stefan's first binge and I'm trying not to let it get me down.

"So do you want to go grab some coffee or something? How long can you stay?" Looking up him, my smile becomes genuine. "I'm so glad you decided to drive up today. It's really good to see you."

Ric looks troubled and his answering smile is quick and pained. "Look, is there someplace private we can talk?"

"Sure." I lead the way back toward the dorm. "Caroline is studying in our room, but there are common areas on every floor between the girls' and the boys' wings. Pretty much nobody uses the one on the third floor."

The lawn is thick with passing students and I wonder if that's why Ric wants privacy. I keep forgetting that he's a new vampire. He died so soon after his transition I just never got used to thinking about him as anything other than human.

I take him up the back staircase just in case, the one everyone avoids because half the lights are burned out and there aren't any windows. Plus, it always smells just a little bit like nacho cheese.

"Are you...hungry?" I ask awkwardly. "We could stop by the room for a snack first, if you need to."

Ric gives me a stiff smile. "No, I'm good. Damon keeps me well-stocked."

I sneak a sideways glance at him as we climb the stairs. The expression he's wearing is the same one he has every time he's about to get uncomfortably parental with me. And suddenly it makes a lot more sense why he drove here when he knew Damon wouldn't be able to come with him.

I stop climbing, leveling a look at my old guardian. "You're here to lecture me about Damon, aren't you?"

His whole expression is weighted with guilt and something uneasy darts through his eyes.

I squeeze my hands into fists, trying not to lose my temper. Ric never liked the idea of his best friend dating me and he was always telling me to be "careful." As if Damon were a bomb I needed to defuse. As if love were something you _could _be cautious about.

"Listen, you've missed a lot of things, Ric. You weren't here when I transitioned, or when we were looking for the cure, or when Jeremy died. You don't know what Damon's like when he's with me."

"Elena–" Ric begins. His voice is heavy and I can tell he's not hearing a word I'm saying.

Anger simmers in my chest and I glare at him. "I'm not another one of Damon's fake compelled girlfriends, Ric. I was _sired_ to him, for God's sake," I sweep an arm out angrily. "He could have treated me however he wanted and I would probably have let him but he never used it for a single thing except to try to protect me. He takes care of me, Ric," I tell him, my voice quieting around the lump forming in my throat. "We take care of each other. And if you don't believe that then you don't know him at all."

"Look, Elena," Ric starts, his eyes dark.

I just shake my head, clenching my jaw in disbelief. I'm beyond tired of Stefan and Caroline and _everyone_ trying to talk me out of being happy with Damon, after everything he's done for all of them.

"I don't have to listen to this," I seethe, already starting down the stairs.

"Wait," Ric calls but I don't even look back. "Elena, Bonnie's dead."

I nearly stumble, I whip around so fast.

And his face tells me everything I don't want to know.

* * *

_Author's Note: Cyber hugs and cheesecakes to my unwaveringly brilliant beta Goldnox. Go check out her fic, "Unthinkable" because the chapter she's posting today is the kind of thing you write, and then set down your pen and say, yes. If I never write another word in my life I can be satisfied. And the chapter she has queued up for a week from now is even. better. than. that. Unmissable, friends. Don't even read the story description. It doesn't matter what it's about. It's a story about truth and beauty and love and pain and what else, really, is anyone looking for? Witty sarcastic sexy Damon? Well, hell, it just so happens to have that too. Lucky us!_

_Special shout out to Nightlightbright today, who (as of yesterday) has the most suspiciously beautiful newborn baby I've ever seen. I suspect airbrushing of the photographs. Everybody go check out her joy-gasm of a story, "River Deep, Ocean Wide" because in honor of Muse Baby's birthday, she posted an epic Delena kiss and I happen to know you all have a bit of a fondness for those..._

_Endless wells of gratitude to all my lovely readers and especially those of you who have been leaving such thoughtful and fascinating reviews. Absolutely love to hear from you all!_

**_Coming Soon from In Time We Trust:_**_Elena talks grief with a dead guy, I shamelessly promote the Black Keys, and a Salvatore starts a bar fight *surprised face!*_


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